


before you come to evening

by Clo



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-13 00:09:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 51,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10502346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clo/pseuds/Clo
Summary: In another universe, eighteen-year old Andy washed up in London without money, friends, or options. One thing led to another and four years later he's scraping along in his career. Some days, he can almost convince himself that being a prostitute isn't all that bad.Today was not one of those days. At least, not until he bumped into a good-looking Serbian guy on the Tube.(Or, the one where Andy ended up a prostitute instead of a tennis player through a series of accidents and bad decisions, and Novak's mostly trying not to screw up his life.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to finish this and post it in one go but it's *so long* already and I've been accidentally editing it instead of writing for actual months. It's post the first part or delete the entire file in despair because I can't stand looking at it any more. 
> 
> This is set just before and around Wimbledon in June 2008, in an alternate universe where Andy didn't become a tennis player. That's literally the only backstory you need; everything else would be a spoiler. There's no outright rape or non-con in this, apart from the implications of Andy being typically Andy and getting on with things he doesn't enjoy all that much, but is choosing to do anyway. More detailed warnings can be found at the end for the entire fic (not just each chapter).
> 
> This entire thing started as a conversation with clayisforgirls on a long-ago Tube train, where for some reason we got to discussing tennis players and the potential for blowjobs on the Tube. I can't remember who started it, so I don't know who to blame for this but I (eventually) wrote it, so I probably can't claim innocence. Whoops.

* * *

_"You found the earth too great for your one life, you found your brain and sinew smaller than the hunger and desire that fed on them - but it has been this way with all men. You have stumbled on in darkness, you have been pulled in opposite directions, you have faltered, you have missed the way, but, child, this is the chronicle of the earth. And now, because you have known madness and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us - we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.”_ \- Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

* * *

 

 

It fits every bloody stupid English stereotype, Andy reflects as he trudges past the gothic spires of Parliament, that it’s creeping toward the end of June but it feels like it’s been raining for a century. London’s sulked beneath the clouds since spring spluttered out, the sun a half-forgotten fantasy, and southern England feels pretty similar right now to – he imagines – a cool day in fucking Antarctica. So much for global warming; he’d been so cold last night, curled bruised and aching beneath his cheap fleece blankets, that he woke more exhausted than when he'd rolled into bed, half-suffocated from sleeping with his head beneath the pillow.

So: fuck-off-summer temperatures, check, on top of the unattractive sleep-deprived-zombie look he's sporting, check – and it really shouldn't be surprising when he plods into Westminster tube station, wearing nothing but too-loose jeans and tattered Converse, that the night guard immediately gives him the stink-eye.

The suspicion still stings. He’s just missing a _shirt_ _;_ it’s not as if he’s strip-teasing by the ticket machines for fuckssake.

He made it to the station okay, for all that the weather kept on theme with his utterly shit evening. Trudging through Westminster, the clouds pressed through the smog overhead with London hunched sullen and empty beneath their oppressive ceiling; he'd had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, breath whistling with the effort. The bridge was a wide strip of emptiness as he hurried across, tarmac splashed with gleaming-orange beneath the street lights and the breeze off the river cutting into every inch of bare, rain-chilled skin. Even the flock of tourists tripping over each other to get their selfies with Big Ben had left, and any Londoner with any sense probably stayed the fuck indoors in the first place so he’d got this far unnoticed and unharrassed, curling miserably between bare, goosbumped-arms as he ducked down the station steps.

To run headfirst into the guard’s abrupt hostility, that at any second might edge into getting Andy arrested. Or worse, asking _sir, are you okay?_ Shit, _shit_.

Thankfully it's late, the evening tipping towards true night outside, and Andy's expression must be sufficiently homicidal because the guy watches him swipe his Oyster through without a word. Still, the weight of a stare prickles up the bare length of his spine all the way to the escalators and the urge to flip the guard off as he heads down is- yeah okay, _stupid_ but hard to resist, the irritation nagging under the cold that’s layered like ice beneath his skin.

Only the temptation of getting out of damp denim stops him giving the guy some attitude (it fucking _chafes_ okay; it’s not the same as backing down). All he wants is to get home, shuck what’s left of his clothes and collapse onto his own shitty-but-familiar mattress, bury the humiliation of his night somewhere behind closed doors and at least marginally comfortable.

All that’ll vanish into a distant fantasy if he gets himself thrown in a holding cell. Again.

To give the guard some credit, if backed into a corner Andy would (grudgingly) admit that he’d stand out anywhere tonight, even if he was wrapped up fit for stupid British weather. On top of a few nights of bad-to-non-existent sleep, the shit-show that tonight’s booking turned into means he looks like the bastard offspring of a crack addict and a walking bruise right now, and probably about as respectable.

He’s constantly reminded that he’s not exactly a catwalk model at the best of times, with his face of sharp angles and dirty ginger hair that refuses to stick to a style no matter how much gel he slathers on. But now, on top of the lingering marks from the handful of bookings he’s scraped up in the last week, his too-pale skin is mottled the weird blotchy shade he goes when he's cold and he’s shivering so hard that his teeth would be chattering if he wasn’t grinding them together. Not to mention that the touch of eyeliner he'd applied hours earlier got smudged by the rain into giant, unflattering panda-eyes. He can see them staring back at him in the polished metal some idiot decided to plaster all around the escalators, his reflection all warped edges and annoyance glaring back from the scratched surface.

So, maybe it’s not just the shirtlessness. Though honestly, that's a pretty good illustration all by itself of what a fucking disaster he’s made of this evening.

It didn’t start well, what with the last-minute summons through the agency; Mr Did-I-Say-You-Could-Touch-That obviously didn’t believe in planning ahead for a fuck, (or for anything else in his life, judging by stack of unopened bills that Andy caught a glimpse of as he was hustled inside). But then he wouldn’t have to; Andy knows the type, inside and out, and that kind of ostentatious central London flat, on the rare occasions Andy gets called there instead of hotel rooms and backstreet clubs, is almost always paid for by the bank of parental indulgence.

They’re probably paying for Andy too. Occasionally when a guy pushes too hard, leaves a few too many free bruises, Andy distracts himself by mentally writing Lord and Lady Fucking Fauntleroy a note: _did you know, your son is fucking away his inheritance debauching low-class hookers, with sex toys he spends his unemployed days overbidding for on eBay? All that_ _inheritance_ _thrown at Oxbridge tuition and he gets his kicks from second-rate shit stamped_ Made in China _and the cheapest dick on the market_. _Great job there._

(Of course he never actually writes any of them – he’s never broken client confidentiality because, as much as he hates his job, he has _standards –_ but it helps him keep his pokerface, to swallow what he’d like to say every time he gets yet another _I’m paying and I don’t want to use a fucking condom_ whine. Just occasionally, it’s nice to pretend that he’s not the biggest fuck-up in the room.)

Tonight had basically been a shitshow from hurried start to running-out-the-door-without-his-shirt finish – he'd have been better off not bothering to leave his flat. He’d told the guy it was only chance that he was free at the last-minute, but the truth, if he'd ever admit it, is his social life is a lifeless wasteland (apart, of course, from all the fucking but he doesn’t think it counts as a party if he’s only there as the hired help). Unsociable hours and not-entirely-legal employment isn’t a winning recipe for making friends; if Kim’s working or has uni work, then he's free pretty much every night he doesn’t have a booking.

But the guy was new, not one of Andy’s regulars, and one of the few perks of his job is that truth is optional, so he didn’t _have_ to admit he’d had nothing more exciting planned for his evening than a date with his sofa and David Attenbrough‘s latest on BBC. When his phone went he’d even been relieved beneath the annoyance at having to get ready at light-speed, already anticipating how much better his bank account would look in the morning as he kicked his shitty shower into producing at-least-lukewarm water.

He could do with the money, always, because even his rat-hole of a flat costs more in rent than Glasgow’s finest condo. If Glasgow even has fucking condos but if it _did,_ Andy’s sure he could live in one for what a loaf of bread costs him in London.

Not that he can even afford a loaf of bread right now. In his unceremonious eviction from the flat, he’d left the envelope containing his fee along with his shirt.

Well what the fuck _eve_ _r,_ he decides as he takes a left toward the Jubilee line. They hadn't got as far as anything worth charging for, so he’ll just count it a bonus that he's out nothing more than the Tube fare and some clothes.

Another plus; he’s nearly got the station to himself as he jogs down the last escalator, humiliation factor muted this late. He’d have stood out like a neon sign at rush hour, a tatty renegade among the harassed, suited businessmen who swarm through Westminster daily to and from their nine-to-fives. Big Ben was chiming eleven when Andy’d trudged through the turnstiles and chances are high he'll get a carriage to himself if he heads to the end of the train. All the better to pretend to himself that he doesn't look like someone who got kicked out of an illegal fuck with just enough time to spare for humiliation, but not to go back for all his clothes.

Like levelling up on the traditional walk of shame, if he hadn't already exhausted his embarrassment for that particular scenario. For hookers, it's just a daily commute.

Anyway, the humiliation he’s used to. Even if it’s usually agreed on in advance and not thrown in for free. He's running low on dignity sure but if he starts handing out discounts he might actually starve.

His luck holds just enough to get him along the platform, passing only a few late night tourists who, as usual, accept every weird thing in London as part of the general ambiance and don't give him a second glance. One guy, suit and skinny tie, expensive, probably heading home from a late work meeting, gives him a longer look that’s laced with speculation and any other night Andy might follow up – see: aforementioned rent worries and he’s got to start eating something other than Rice Crispies soon, with more than one recent customer remarking on the sharp lines of his collarbone, the edging-into-feral look he gets when he drops a few too many pounds – but with the direction of his luck tonight the guy’ll be an undercover cop.

The siren call of his own shitty mattress holds out and Andy blanks the guy’s smile with his best pokerface, striding out as if anyone has a right to be walking along through a shiny-concrete-and-glass Tube station half-naked. It must be enough because the guy doesn’t follow, and Andy makes it to the end of the platform un-arrested, thank fuck.

He leans on the safety glass bracketing the platform and the tracks, placed there to stop the harassed, suited businessmen deciding the tracks look more tempting than going back to their harassed, suited offices, and sighs. Goosebumps spring up on top of goosebumps over his wet skin at the chill press of glass, from the breeze drifting along the tunnel. Not for the first time he wonders if he’s going soft living this far south.

Then he remembers that if this was happening back home, he’d be dying of exposure on an outdoor train station that’d probably be half-submerged in torrential Scottish rain. Mentally he awards London a point on the scorecard he promised himself he’d quit keeping months ago.

Four years and he’s barely made it past Croydon. It’s well past time he accepted _backpacking next year_ will never become _this year_ , or _ever._

He’s so cold, and so pissed off – that latter isn’t going away any time soon, no matter how many warm towels he mummifies himself in when he gets home – that the thud of the train arriving has him flinching up from his slouch, disorientated briefly by the thump of air and the clatter the tube trains bring with them, a solid wall of sound he’s still not used to. It’s as good an excuse as any for why he forgets to check the carriage before he stumbles through the doors and it’s only when he’s slumped into the nearest seat does he catch movement in the corner of his eye and think, _you idiot_.

There’s a guy sitting a few seats down. A guy staring openly _already_ , and Andy groans silently as the doors slam shut. Trapped but this is London and the Tube; surely stiff British etiquette is on his side and they can make it in awkward silence until the next stop.

He fixes his eyes resolutely on his battered Chucks – black, cool without being too hipster he’d thought when he bought them – and notices there’s a hole wearing in the toe. Great, he’s passing the point of _mugging victim_ and heading straight to _tramp._ No wonder he got kicked out tonight. No wonder that guy is staring.

This is hardly the most embarrassing thing he’s done, though (it’s not even close, if he were ever inclined to come up with a numbered list). But tonight’s left him a little too raw and tired, and he settles deeper into his seat, trying to dig himself into the rough fabric with his shoulder blades. The guy’ll hopefully lose interest in a minute; despite Andy’s accidental profession, he’s nothing special to look at. _Weasel-faced_ one colleague, called him, only half-joking, and for all he splashes out on the gym when he can afford it, jogs when he can’t, his abs aren’t anything Shakespeare would write odes to or anything.

Okay, so it’s a bit odd to see a half-naked guy on the Tube but he’s nothing to merit a second glance.

Unless- he checks his chest and no, the guy from earlier was too busy getting off on his own righteous bullshit to leave a hickey. There’s just his pasty, uninteresting skin, rain and melted gel dripping on it from the sad disaster of his hair.

His skin prickles with the weight of being watched and the guy is _still staring_ . Maybe he’s a past client, or maybe he’s smarter than the average commuter and leaped to the right assumption. Risking a glance, surreptitious through his eyelashes, Andy gets no more than an impression of _branded hoodie, expensive trainers_ before he’s pinned by a hazel stare and feels his cheeks heat, caught.

Before he can pretend it was an accident, the corner of the guy’s mouth quirks up.

The train jerks to a halt at the next station but Andy’s staring in the deliberate unfocused way of nosy Londoners on the Tube now, sideways and pretending he just _happens_ to be looking in the general vicinity where the guy _happens_ to be. There’s nothing about him that screams _weirdo_ ; he looks young for a start, younger than Andy or maybe his life just has less stress to give him worry-lines. His hoodie is soft-looking and new, his stubble a bare shadow across a thin, tanned face that’s- well yeah, he’s no Beckham, but then Andy’s grateful to at least feel a _little_ less hopelessly outclassed.

Obviously not a Londoner with the frank appraisal he’s giving Andy instead of observing sacred Tube etiquette of Ignore and Ye Shall Be Ignored. But not obviously a tourist and, despite the tan, Andy wonders if he might be English before he spots the flag, a couple of inches square, sewn to the hoodie sleeve.

Kind of weird to be that patriotic but maybe it’s a brand thing. Maybe the guy isn’t- Andy squints to make out the emblem on the flag, risking being a bit too obvious, but he’s shit at political geography and the red-white-blue only brings to mind France. Maybe the guy’s a confused Frenchman, marvelling at the psychotic British who wander around shirtless despite their pathetic Arctic excuse for a summer.

The warning beep as the doors close catches his attention and Andy looks up just in time to see them slam shut on Green Park station. Which was his stop, if he wants to get on a line going anywhere near home. Fuck.

‘Excuse me?’

What the fuck _;_ it’s the guy, out of his seat and hesitantly polite and okay, apparently they’re going to break the sacred barrier of Tube silence because he’s _coming over_. Cautious, Andy looks up and the guy is standing right there, just outside arm-length and incidentally, not holding on to anything.

Andy’s about to warn him (fucking tourists) when the train jerks forward and the guy wobbles, does something fast with his feet and steadies back to upright, all without taking his eyes off Andy. Grudgingly, Andy awards him a point for impressive balance. It’s probably trained in if the outfit is anything to judge by; the joggers and shoes are all high-end sports clothes.

Of course it all looks pretty new, so it’s just as likely he’s a show-off who counts _working out_ as a five minute jog to the pub after work.

‘What can I do you for?’ Andy asks, on sarcasm autopilot. Only when he gets a blank look does Andy replay the original query and register the guy’s accent, heavy behind the politeness. Not English then, combination of sarcasm and Scottish proving incomprehensible. ‘Sorry. What’s up?’

Sports Guy’s brow furrows and Andy guesses there’s some mental gymnastics going on behind those pretty hazel eyes to translate the colloquialism. London and enough snide comments from public school-educated clients have weathered down the thickness of Andy’s accent but it clings on stubbornly when he’s tired, or not really trying. Getting bothered on the Tube by a potential gym-addict weirdo is definitely a not-trying situation.

‘Sorry to intrude,’ Sports says hesitantly. When he frowns, there’s crinkles around those pretty eyes that look like laugh lines; Andy doubts they’re from worry, not with the outfit and the limited edition Seiko watch on one tanned wrist. A client gifted him with a similar version once and Andy pawned it for an entire month’s rent.

Is the guy testing the waters, seeing if he’s right to assume before flat-out asking how much? Looks rich enough to throw money at something rather than working for it for free, and if he’s from out of town he wouldn’t have regulars. Could be Andy’s luck for the evening is turning, which seems unlikely. But then, it’s well past fucking time for it.

Thinking of his pathetically empty fridge and even more pathetic bank account, Andy figures _hey, why not_. At least if he gets arrested they might feed him if he doesn’t try to fight the arresting officer this time.

Tilting his head back, he drums up a false smile with the ease of practice and meets the guy’s stare full on, trying to look appealing and not like a half-frozen tramp, probably with mixed success.

‘Not at all,’ he says, soothing out the burr of his accent automatically. ‘Is there something I can do for you? Something you’re looking for maybe?’ Deliberately he shifts in his seat so his jeans slip, bare another half-inch of skin and notes Sports’ eyes widening. _Jackpot_.

‘I wonder,’ Sports says and his voice pitches up to uncertainty, ‘if you were from here? How do you say- native?’

‘Local,’ Andy corrects. Fuck, this guy’s practically gift-wrapped. It’s definitely a U-turn in luck because the pursuit is Andy’s least favourite part of his job, hating the struggle to compress his innate awkward into something smoother, more charming. It’s why he pays the agency after all, to deliver him an address and a sure thing. ‘Not originally, but I am now. I can do local if that’s what you’re looking for.’

The train brakes into the next station but neither of them look toward the doors. Andy should get off, catch a train going back to make his connection but if he can hook Sports independently then he won’t have to pay the usual third to the agency and he’ll make his rent on time, for once.

Carefully he shifts his hand from where it’s resting on his leg, sliding slow up to the dip where thigh met crotch and spreading his fingers in an overly-casual framing gesture. Making it obvious; anyone stepping on the train would know at a glance what’s going on, Sports hesitating with his mouth open on stalled words while Andy sprawls out across the seats, advertising the goods on offer as sure as any of the posters stickering the walls.

Their luck holds and the doors slam shut, enclosing them back in privacy for another few minutes. Andy tries to remember the next station, what’s the closest hotel that’ll turn a blind eye if Sports is staying somewhere too far. The important thing is to appear casually in control; he’d lost more than a few bookings through hesitation when he’d first started out, until trial and error taught him which clients liked the shy out-of-town Scottish boy act and which liked a challenge.

For all the mute hesitation, Sports definitely looks like the latter. He’s giving Andy an obvious once-over now, lingering over the sharp cut of his hips, the thin lines of bruising across his abs from one of Andy’s regulars a few days ago. Faded to almost yellow but the cane leaves a distinctive pattern and Sports is frowning at it, hands curling to fists at his sides.

‘I just wanted to ask,’ Sports says and the hoarse edge pushes Andy’s smile towards genuine because if there’s anything he _knows,_ it’s what a guy sounds like when he’s turned on, ‘if it’s not any trouble-’

‘No trouble,’ Andy murmurs, tucking his thumb into the waistband of his jeans and experiencing a rush of satisfaction at the flush spreading across Sports’ cheeks.

‘If-’ Sports swallows. ‘If you can tell me which train to catch to Wimbledon?’

Which- oh _fucking shitting hell._ Well _now_ Andy feels like a monumental tit.

He can’t help a, ‘What- seriously?’ gritted out with on an incredulous overtone and fuck, he’s blushing which means he’ll be tomato-red all the way down his chest in a minute. _Way to misread a situation, Murray_ , he tells himself as he straightens up in his seat with mortification cramping in his stomach, cursing himself for even leaving the house tonight.

Not that he’d _said_ anything – nothing that would’ve got him arrested if this was a set-up, but it’d been pretty obvious that he was offering himself up like a free taster before the main event. _Fuck_.

‘Sorry- yes,’ Sports says. He’s still frowning, tilting his head as his gaze flicks over Andy with unexpected measure despite the flush sitting high across his cheeks. ‘Is that hard?'

Andy bites his lip and Sports inhales sharp, eyes going wide. ‘Wait, I mean difficult. I did not-’

‘I know what you meant,’ Andy says to put both of them out of their misery. Which is pretty tricky when he _is_ half-hard, too much cock-teasing without relief tonight and from the uncomfortable way Sports is shifting his weight Andy’s guessing he’s not far off either.

The thought flickers, tentative ad wistful; it would’ve been interesting, as much as he applies that concept to sex these days. Sports isn’t quite handsome but he’s fit, and someone Andy might’ve actually opted to sleep with given the choice, which would’ve been a nice change.

 _Would’ve_ been of course, if Andy wasn’t trying to will them to the next station faster so he can flee this miserable situation. Possibly running all the way to throwing himself in the Thames. Sure drowning in London’s collective sludge has downsides but he wouldn’t have to remember this anymore and that’s a big fat check under the _pros_ column. Fuckity _fuck_ , how did he offend the universe enough to deserve this entire evening? At least he’s almost certain now that Sports is a tourist so Andy’s never going to have to see him again once they get off this fucking Tube.

‘Wimbledon’s easy,’ he mutters, burying his mortification in gruffness. ‘You need to go back to Waterloo and catch a train. You shouldn’t have to wait too long. You should get off- I _mean,_ you should change at the next stop.’

Sports doesn’t seem to notice the fumble this time, instead looking around to take in the carriage, the neat seats and advertising, his frown turning bewildered.

‘Is this not a train?’

‘You need an overground train.’ That gets Andy a blank look and silently he curses himself for even considering what he’s about to offer, for the clinging soft-heartedness no amount of canes and paddles seem to shift.

‘I suppose,’ he says, heavy with reluctance, ‘I could show you.’

Given the crashing idiot he’s just proved himself, it’s not surprising that Sports doesn’t immediately leap at the offer but the wariness that flashes over his expression is, in Andy’s opinion, uncalled for. He doesn’t cut a threatening figure, what with the bruises and the foot wedged firmly in his mouth, and he’s not the one bothering a ‘native’ for directions. The guy is obviously completely lost if he’s trying to find Wimbledon on the Jubilee line. So why is he looking at Andy as if he’s a potential axe murderer and not someone innocently offering help with directions?

Okay – there was the whole thing where Andy just tried to get him to pay for illegal gay sex. As introductions go, he’s probably had better.

‘Is it where you are going?’ Sports asks, tentative. ‘I do not want to bother you.’

It isn’t; it’s going to add almost an hour to Andy’s trip home just getting this guy on the right train, but it’s not as if his sofa is going to be pissed at him if he misses their date. Plus he’s offered now, and if he backs out he’ll spend the rest of the week feeling even worse about tonight than he was going to already. Sports might be rich but Andy’s rating his street smart level a notch below the squirrels that mug visitors for sandwiches in Hyde Park; who ends up not only in the wrong part of London, but doesn't have the sense to get off the obviously wrong Tube line? It figures that Sports would be staying in Wimbledon when he has money for £2000 watches, but not sense enough to pick up a map.

Not to mention (even considering that Andy is hardly qualified to pass judgment on anyone’s life choices) of the commuters in their thousands on the Tube to approach for directions, it took a spectacular lack of self-preservation to pick the topless prostitute.

So instead of explaining, he just says, ‘It’s fine,’ and offers a hand because Sports is still watching him with intent wariness. Maybe it’s that which trips him into offering his actual name, and not one of the handful of aliases he uses with clients, following some weird urge to prove to this complete stranger that he’s trustworthy after all. ‘I’m Andy.’

Sports takes the hand with overt caution but his grip is firm, palm dry and callused in a way that suggests he works with his hands somehow. ‘Novak.’

‘Novak?’ Andy asks, frowning as he thinks of the flag. ‘Is that Polish?’

He has no idea what he said right but the tension goes out of Sports’ – Novak’s – shoulders immediately.

‘Serbian,’ he replies with a grin that lights up his entire face and drops into the seat beside Andy, all long limbs and casual invasion of personal space. Maybe it wasn’t the illegal gay sex offer that freaked him out, but Andy can’t come up with a viable alternative suggestion. It’s almost like-

No, the only reason Andy would have to recognise someone, that Novak might be worried he _would_ , is if he’d been a client, and Andy’s damn sure he’d remember fucking someone all hard, slender angles and those hazel eyes. There’s just enough tightness to the expensive jeans to suggest the muscle beneath and no, he wouldn’t forget something so beyond his usual businessmen-in-a-hurry and closeted family men fucking him in cheap hotel rooms while no one was looking. He’s never seen Novak before.

Dismissing it, he’s about to mention that they should change trains at the next stop – when every nerve comes to screaming life as an unexpected, callused fingertip traces across his chest.

Okay no, it _definitely_ wasn’t the illegal gay sex that was the problem.

‘How did you get these?’ Novak asks, casually poking the cane marks as if Andy being shirtless amounts to an invitation. He hesitates though, fingers curling away, when Andy sucks in a startled breath. ‘Sorry! I intrude.’

‘Its fine,’ Andy says again, although the stab of sensation from the bruise jolted right down to his crotch. Trying to be surreptitious, he shifts his hips to ease the pressure of denim and silently curses the client earlier for changing his mind; if he’d already come tonight, it’d be much easier not to react to the warmth of Novak pressed up against his side. ‘It’s a secret but I guess I can tell you. I’m a member of the Queen’s royal ninja guard and we have practice every morning. This is from getting hit with Her Majesty’s training sword every day in Buckingham Palace.’

Novak opens his mouth. Shuts it again, and frowns, which is when Andy can’t hold a straight face any longer; his lips twitch, tugging up and Novak pokes him in the abs harder.

‘You are fucking with me!’ he says, accusing and Andy laughs.

‘Yeah. Had you for a minute though.’

‘Asshole,’ Novak says without rancour. An expression suspiciously close to a pout wars against a grin around his mouth, amusement fighting through a half-hearted poker-face and Andy’s hit like a fist in the ribs with an urge to kiss the petulance away completely, left breathless by a sudden ache of want that’s bittersweet.

In a realisation that blooms warm against the ache of bone-deep cold, he realises he probably would’ve enjoyed sex with Novak - realises he still _wants_ it. Even though he knows better than most the deceptive nature of first impressions, the usual clients he gets aren’t into the kind of teasing that involves laughter.

‘You were half right anyway,’ he allows, careful because he- shit, he’s only admitted this to a total outsider once before and that only after the sole time he’d consumed his bodyweight in alcohol, but inexplicably he _wants_ to tell Novak. Maybe it’s the same fatalistic urge that made him want to flip off the guard, lingering burn of humiliation from tonight driving him to ever-stupider life choices. For all he feels like he owes the Serb after that intensely awkward introduction, he gets a feeling too that Novak’s less stupid than he’s pretending and he’ll appreciate the honesty.

It’s not an excuse, he tells himself, too tired to make it sound believable to himself. Watching Novak’s gaze flick sideways at him, sharp and all narrow-eyed intent, he takes a deep breath. ‘I got them from fucking with people. Or letting people fuck me, more accurately.’

They’re stopping at another station – they might’ve stopped at a few honestly; Andy’s not paying attention – but neither of them move. Novak’s frowning slightly but Andy’s pretty sure it’s not in surprise or disgust, even with nerves clenching tight in his chest. If anything he’d say that Novak looks thoughtful as reaches out to trace the yellowing line of the darkest bruise with a ticklish-light touch and god, Andy’s never met anyone so confident in touching a willing stranger.

And he has sex with strangers _every day_.

‘This is not from fucking only,’ Novak says, edging on tentative as he taps the bruise too gently to sting. ‘This is being hit, yes?’

Andy hitches a shoulder in a non-committal _maybe._ Half-defensive with anxiety because this- this _lack_ of reaction is a little weird. Even Kim had gone (loudly) wary, for a minute before settling down to sympathetic curiosity and after the evening he’s had, the last thing he needs is for this to turn into a yelling match on the Tube.

‘Yeah’ he says, cautious. ‘Sometimes, they want that. Sometimes other things. They’re the ones paying, and we agree the limits before I get there. It’s fine.’

Novak’s hand stills, fingertip pressing just below the curve of Andy’s ribs and there’s the same tension from before back in the hunch of his shoulders, the shuttered expression he’s wearing as he studies Andy’s face now, not his stomach.

‘Is it okay with you?’

‘Well- yeah.’ Andy shrugs again, aware of his heart racing but he’s not spent years play-acting for nothing and his voice comes out flatly casual, accent rounding off the edges of the words barely at all because he’s learned to hold it back even with panic lumped in his throat. His job teaches a surprising number of real-world life skills and they all get hammered home under pressure. ‘I like some parts more than others, but that’s any job. Do you like everything in yours?’

‘My job does not ask to beat me up,’ Novak says pointedly and then hesitates. ‘Not often. And not with sticks.’

Andy’s stomach drops with sudden disappointment. Closing his hands on the edge of his seat, he digs his fingers into the rough fabric for grounding but forcing his tone light takes an effort as he asks, ‘What is this – the Inquisition?’ Because, fuck. Looks like Novak’s disgusted after all, freaking out about this if not the _whore_ thing. It was too good to be true anyway, he shouldn’t have let himself be tricked into hope and his tone dips toward hostility when he adds:

'Unless you're asking for a price to do it yourself, it's not really any of your business is it?'

Part of him - the part that isn't aching to be in his own bed and to never catch a Tube again for fear of overly-tactile Serbian tourists – quivers with the hope that Novak will ask _how much_. There's a mark-up for anything that leaves visible bruising and Novak looks pretty skinny beneath the bulky hoodie; Andy doubts he packs much of a forehand and he’s hot, Andy’s cock already on board with wherever this goes. It'd be worth the rent money.

Instead, alarm so heartfelt it's almost comical flashes across Novak's face.

'No, that isn't-!' He starts and breaks off, swallowing whatever he'd been about to say. 'I did not mean, is bad you know? Only I see you here, and you look unhappy and then you say you get hit, I think maybe there is connection. Sorry. I always do the stupid thing you know, jump without seeing right?’

Despite himself, Andy feels his mouth tug reluctantly towards a smile. ‘You mean look before you leap.’

‘Right.’ Novak smiles back, uncertain at the edges but already the tension is easing between them, Novak’s shoulder pushing into Andy’s as he slumps back into his seat. ‘I open my mouth always to say the wrong thing, offend wrong people. You should meet Fe- this guy I ah, work with. Every time I speak is dark looks and Novak, why are you so stupid? Novak, why you do impressions and bring shame on us, you are disgrace. No matter what I do, you know?’

‘Sounds like a right tosser,’ Andy offers, and Novak laughs. He laughs with his whole body, head thrown back and Andy looks at the slender arc of his throat, all golden tan beneath the sweep of dark stubble and has to swallow hard against the heat prickling beneath his skin. Against the unfairness of never getting what he wants.

They’re slowing into another station, rattle of the train winding down to a brief interlude of quiet, and into it he says, forcing it out quick before he loses courage when Novak looks back at him, ‘Thank you anyway I guess, for worrying. Most people don’t.’

Head still tipped back, lips parted on breathlessness, Novak slants him a sideways look. It’s thoughtful, and soft with something that only can’t be called _fondness_ because it’s too new.

‘Then,’ he says, surprisingly sincere behind the half-smile, ‘people are stupid.’

Flushing, Andy looks away. This is too much too soon, the give and take between them deceptively easy and he knows he should stop this before it turns into another regret boxed away like a weight in his chest. He’ll show Novak to Waterloo and he’ll go home, back to his tiny studio flat with the constant smell of soy sauce from the Chinese takeaway across the street, and the embarrassingly-sagging couch he dragged home from a charity shop. In a week he’ll have forgotten the particular shade of Novak’s eyes, in a month the softly-tempting curl of his mouth. Nothing in his life up until this point would suggest chance encounters on trains lead to anything other than half-remembered _what-ifs_ that are always better than the reality.

They still need to change trains anyway and he opens his mouth to suggest they move, when the doors close on yet another platform. Shit. They’re going to end up in the depot at this rate.

‘So what parts do you like?’

Startled out of bitterness, Andy looks back at Novak who’s watching him still with that not-quite-there smile, as if he’s spent time trying to learn to look serious but it didn’t quite take.

‘What?’ he asks, suddenly wary. ‘We don’t kiss and tell you know.’

‘This is not anyone private though? Just you. Tell me,’ Novak coaxes as if they’re already old friends sharing confidences, curiosity glittering bright and sharp beneath his attempt to keep a straight face. ‘Your favourite thing.’

 _I don’t have a favourite_ , Andy thinks but it’s not true, not really; he prides himself on the parts of his job he’s actually good at on a purely technical level, but there are a few things that coil arousal a little tighter, burn a little hotter. He’s only human.

He’s just not sure he can offer that knowledge up to an almost-stranger, even one this charming. Not when tonight’s already stripped him to the skin metaphorically and literally. He was _just thinking_ about how miserable it’ll be to watch Novak walk away; how stupid then, to give them both more reasons to regret things they can't have.

Hesitating, he meets Novak’s eyes – and sees them darken, pupils wide. With fresh interest he notes the colour warming the Serb’s cheeks, the way he catches his lip between his teeth, worries it puffy and flushed as he frowns. Still turned on and if Andy’s wary of offering up affection, then lust –well, _that_ he knows exactly how to work with.

Reaching out in a deliberate movement, he rests his hand on Novak’s thigh. It’s warm through denim, hard with muscle and Andy watches Novak’s eyes flutter, down and back, throat bobbing as he swallows something not quite a sound.

‘There _is_ one thing in particular,’ Andy says and slides his fingers up another inch, digging in to feel Novak’s shiver. ‘But I’m pretty shit with words. I could show you, if you’re up for it?’

'I don't-' Novak's eyes go wide suddenly, uncertainty caught in the corners of his mouth curling down. 'Here?'

Andy grins, makes it frank and uncomplicated despite the quiver of anxiety sitting in his stomach. He's fucked bare-assed against apartment windows, over antiques in back rooms at packed auction houses, and, memorably, come into a client's hand under the table during a business dinner at Sheekeys. In comparison this is private, entire carriage to themselves and minimal chance of anyone getting on at the few stations left on the line. If he's quick, it'll be over before Novak has time to shout.

Still, the little voice that he mostly ignores, the one that tries to reason him out of stupid decisions on a daily basis, is pointing out that he's only being this reckless because he wants to _taste_ Novak before they part ways. He might forget how the Serb looks, or sounds, but he never forgets how people feel; once they’re in, they’re written in body-memory and half-fragments of dreams for years after. He wants to keep Novak burned across his fingertips, hoard this weird spark between them like a miser, long after obviously rich-and-successful Novak has forgotten the odd Scottish boy on the Tube.

'It'll be fine,' he says, hand pushing further and Novak inhales with a shocked little sound when Andy gropes him through his jeans. He's hard, hot even through the concealing denim and the way his hips push up is all the confirmation Andy needs; Novak wants this as much as he does.

Not enough to hold back a protest though, gritted out with obvious reluctance as he rocks into Andy’s hand, his head thrown back and mouth wide on a gasp, tongue a tantalising flash of red as he wets his lips.

‘Andy, Andy you don’t understand- we _can’t_. If someone sees, so much trouble. For me, for you. Is bad idea.’

‘Bad is relative,’ Andy says, glancing up at the Tube map stickered along the top of the carriage. Four stations left so he’ll have to be quick. ‘No one will see. It’s late and we’re at the arse end of the line, no one’s getting on.’ Taking a chance, he curls his fingers tight and leans in as Novak hisses, presses an open-mouthed kiss to the warm, vulnerable line of his throat.

‘Trust me,’ he murmurs against damp skin, rough with evening stubble, feeling the throb of Novak’s pulse against the slick edge of his tongue. ‘It’ll be worth it.’

The sound Novak makes is incoherent, twisted around his gasps for air but a jerky nod is agreement enough.

 _Okay then,_ Andy thinks, and tries not to think of all the ways this could backfire. Cautious – his track record is decidedly ah, pathetic, when neither party is getting paid so he can’t let himself trust he’ll get this right yet – he fumbles blindly with the ease of practice, waiting all the time for the _no_ that doesn’t come. Pops the button on Novak’s jeans and when his fingertips brush skin, both of them shiver.

‘Take your hoodie off,’ Andy whispers, thinking it through. Novak doesn’t follow if the confused face he makes is any indication, but he obediently unzips his hoodie with hands that aren’t quite steady, letting Andy tug it down his arms and _oh._

Andy silently retracts every uncharitable thought about Novak wearing sports gear to look cool because those are some _nice_ muscles. Tanned here too, rich gold dusted with sun-bleached hair and Andy may have to rethink his vague impression of Serbia as a cold, snowy misery if it can produce _this_. The sleeves of Novak’s t-shirt – which is fire-truck red, Andy admiring the contrast against Novak’s skin, the complement to his flushed-raw mouth – reveal just a hint of tan lines so he guesses the colour’s earned honestly outdoors rather than from a sunbed addiction.

Andy grins his approval as he meets Novak’s lazy smile when he catches the stare, cocksure in his own skin.

That wavers when Andy tugs down the zipper of his jeans, pushing them aside to bare black briefs and he enjoys the choked sound Novak makes when he rubs a thumb over the damp cotton so much that he does it again, pressing over the swell of Novak’s dick. Hard now, straining at the fabric and Andy takes a final look at Novak’s flushed cheeks, his pupils blown wide with arousal, before he says:

‘If anyone gets on, pretend I’m just sleeping,’ and he shrugs the hoodie around his shoulders as he ducks down, tugs the hood over his head so to anyone not sitting directly next to them it’ll look like nothing more than him sleeping with his head in Novak’s lap.

Whatever protest Novak makes is muffled by the hood, although he grips Andy’s shoulder tight beneath it and Andy has a startled second to panic before he realises Novak’s not pushing him away. Just holding him steady, awkward to balance on the narrow seats and Andy hums appreciation with his mouth hot on the cotton separating him from bare skin. Novak smells of heat and musk, a faint tang of the soap he must use beneath and Andy can’t wait – they’re on a time limit, fast running out of remaining stops – so he pulls the briefs aside, easing Novak free in the shadows as he leans in close, breathes warm air over hard, flushed skin.

The rewarding twitch, head to toe, from Novak is delicious. Andy feels like his every move is telegraphed in the quiver of Novak beneath his fingertips, in the half-choked quiet gasps.

‘ _Andy_ ,’ Novak says, voice ragged with permission and Andy doesn’t hesitate. Lick to the head as a warning, salt wet slick sharp on his tongue, and then he swallows Novak in one, smooth motion, all the way to the thatch of dark hair at the base.

Sucking dick for a living has its perks.

He has to give Novak credit for self-control; despite the tension quivering beneath Andy’s hands and mouth the Serb doesn’t jerk up into him like far too many clients, holding still with his grip flexing on Andy’s shoulder. Relaxing his throat, Andy gives him everything in return, heat and wet, tight suction even as salt-bitter precome drips out the seal of his lips, slicking his chin.

He wasn’t lying to Novak when he said he loves this best. Loves that no one expects him to talk with his mouth full of dick, loves that he’s excellent at it, knowing that without needing to be told because Novak’s practically shaking apart against him. Pulling back far enough to use his tongue, alternating pointed tip and flat, soft circles, he distantly registers the braking of the train into the next station and ticks it off a mental list. Three to go, hurry up, hurry up, and he deep throats Novak again, feeling the lack of oxygen start to blur the world to dizziness.

Which is when Novak’s hand on his shoulder goes abruptly tight, sharp pain of bruising that means Andy’ll wear the imprint of it tomorrow, _fuck._

Tears start behind his eyelids, hot with unexpected hurt, and it’s all Andy can do to keep his teeth from scraping sensitive skin. Almost chokes, throat sore when he lifts up slightly and the grip holding him down, tension too tight for arousal, is clue enough for him to get it, tamp down the flare of worry that Novak likes bruises after all. Because the way he’s trembling is fear, not pleasure, and there’s only one thing that could be.

Someone got on the train. Meaning, someone is _in the carriage_ with them and Andy’s here, mouth full of an indecent exposure charge waiting to happen.

Blinded by the hoodie, Andy can’t look; he’d give them away instantly, mouth worn red, pre-come and spit slick down his chin even if he managed to cover up Novak’s complete lack of being fit for public consumption. Can’t move either, almost shaking with the effort of holding still, Novak hard and heavy on his tongue, so close to the edge. The thigh muscles beneath his hand are knotted, Novak strung out tense as piano wire with panic and if he snaps, if he makes a sound, it’s game over. Arrested before they make it through the ticket barriers.

Unless-

\- its got to be just one person, this late. Minimal chance it’s a police officer, and better than fair chance they’re wearing headphones, given that it’s the favoured method for Tube commuters to isolate themselves from the miserably _public_ parts of _public transport_ ; they won’t be able (or want) to hear anything around them.

There’s just a chance they could get away with it. With _this_.

Weighing the odds with pre-come leaking bitter all over his tongue might be skewing his judgement but Andy’s one marketable factor, according to his boss, is his unflinching ability to take whatever shit gets thrown his way and ride with it. It’s why he gets given to the difficult clients, the ones who get whip-happy or want the weird shit no one likes to describe aloud over the phone. It’s why the other men at the agency smile at him even as they edge away, make excuses and avoid meeting his eyes.

Andy knows he isn’t particularly attractive, or charming, but he can do this. Be tough enough to look whatever the universe hits him with straight in the eye and not give a fuck. After four years he’s so good at it that it’s even true, most of the time.

So instead of sliding back, giving Novak the space to wind down and breathe, Andy tightens his lips and _sucks_.

He feels the shout Novak swallows in the way the muscles of his stomach quiver, pressed to Andy’s cheek. The hand on his shoulder clenches with an unbelievable grip, hard enough that Andy makes an involuntary hum of protest and he feels the effort it takes Novak to relax, the stutter of his fingertips as he trembles. In answer Andy works his throat in appreciation, driving the other man to the edge as hard and fast as he knows how.

He wishes he could see Novak’s face, see if the firework bursts of bliss every time Andy swirls his tongue are written across his mouth and eyes as clear as they are in his entire body, hot and pliable beneath Andy’s hands. He’s seen so many people come and it’s never dignified, the instant in which they tip over and the crash of pleasure overwhelms self-control – but he thinks Novak might be beautiful in the loss.

If he was an optimist he might let himself think, _next time_ , but he abandoned any delusions of _happily ever after_ a long time ago. It’s enough, anyway, that he has this, Novak silk-slick and hot against his tongue, the careful way he’s pressing his palm flat to Andy’s shoulder without gripping again even as he shakes apart. It’s all heat and airless darkness beneath the hoodie, Andy’s chest tight with breathlessness now but there’s salt-bitterness in his mouth and Novak’s hips jerk, desperate, and the abrupt release of tension warns Andy in time to pull back, just enough.

Novak comes silent, body arcing as he barely jerks on the rush of it. Andy swallows, used to the taste and writing off air as a secondary consideration to drawing out the pleasure of working Novak through the shakes, until he goes limp, relaxing into his seat with a sigh Andy feels, ghost-breath over his shoulder where the hoodie’s slipped to bare skin.

Sitting up immediately would be too obvious, spelling out their public indecency for whoever’s on the train. Andy keeps still instead, Novak’s softening dick slipping from his mouth. Resting his head on warm denim-clad thigh he breathes, slow and deep, until the world stops spinning.

He’s too tired to be surprised when Novak’s hand comes to curl at the back of his neck beneath the concealing hoodie, affection disproportionate to what this is, to what Andy expected. His callused fingertips trace circles through the tendrils of hair stuck to sweat-damp skin, careful as if Andy’s liable to break. They stay like that until the train rocks into another station, Andy feeling the press of braking and the cool breeze from the doors. Can’t hear footsteps over the thump of his own heartbeat but Novak’s hand vanishes from the back of his neck and suddenly the hoodie is tugged back.

‘Andy.’ Novak sounds like he’s been eating sand, voice rasped to shreds with being swallowed into silence. ‘They’re gone, it’s okay.’

Andy takes a minute to lever himself upright, feeling the awkward position in every aching joint and so hard his vision blurs at the friction from his jeans. Sparing a clumsy hand to tuck Novak back into his briefs, they both hiss as the contact and Andy’s about to mumble an apology when Novak’s hand curves along his chin, careful as he pushes up and then his mouth is soft on Andy’s.

It’s not an ideal kiss, Andy’s lips raw and there’s a sting of copper from Novak’s where he’s bitten them, probably trying to stay quiet. For all that it’s easy, fit of their mouths together almost instinctive and Andy leans into Novak with a quiet sound caught between them. Novak’s free hand skates over his shoulder with a warm, bold touch, traces the line of his spine and scratches lightly over the dip where his jeans have slid down, fingertips sliding beneath the waistband, unsteady touch that’s all question rather than demand.

Andy breaks the kiss as the hand slips around to where he’s hard, panting out, ‘You don’t have to- we don’t have much time.’

‘Let me,’ Novak murmurs, pleading note beneath the rasp and Andy’s not really inclined to argue. Keeps the kiss going as Novak pops the button on his jeans, as the hand wriggles in- and stops, pressing hard into bare skin instead of underwear.

Novak pulls back to give him a startled look.

‘They’re in the same place as my shirt,’ Andy mutters, knowing his cheeks are flushing warm because, god he’s such a mess. ‘Long story.’

Novak hums an amused sound and leans forward again, kisses the hard line of Andy’s cheekbone where his blush sits, mouth soft and cool against the heated skin.

‘Mmm,’ he murmurs, softly affectionate,’ a story you must tell me I think, another time. Now-’

He twists his wrist and wraps slender fingers over Andy’s dick, catching Andy’s gasp with his mouth. Pressing forward, Novak kisses him wet and enthusiastic as he works his hand, tongue licking in to open up Andy’s mouth until it’s all he can do to gasp in air against Novak’s lips, close his eyes and push up into the drag of callused fingers. Already wet with pre-come, slicking the friction into something delicious and Andy tries to focus long enough to guess if Novak’s done this before, if the roughness of his grip is orgasm-clumsiness or inexperience, but his thoughts are scattering like confetti in the breeze, pleasure sparking glittering lights behind his eyelids as he rides the edge, and he loses focus on anything other than the steady rhythm of Novak’s hand.

There’s a brush of warmth against his mouth, Novak murmuring something but Andy’s too far gone to parse even what language it’s in. Novak doesn’t seem to want a response anyway, a soft litany breathed over his cheek, the dip of his temple, the reassuring rise and fall of nonsense sound as Andy curls forward to rest his forehead on Novak’s shoulder and comes so hard he makes an inadvertent whimper of sound, leaning into the other man’s steady warmth as the world blurs.

For a long minute all he can do is breathe through it, fractured little pants pressed into the curve of Novak’s shoulder. Lasts until the rush eases down to the bone-deep exhaustion of the best sex and he realises he’s slumped boneless into the Serb, one hand tangled loosely in his shirt and shivering with aftershocks from public sex in the middle of a Tube train.

Fuck, he’s supposed to be the professional here. How the hell did he let himself get into this situation?

He tries to straighten up, pull away from Novak to regain some shreds of dignity but every muscle stages a revolt and he sways back down. Rendered useless by a single orgasm; if the sex trade was the kind of industry to award employee of the month, he’d be getting whatever sits at the opposite end of the scale. Epic embarrassment to whores everywhere of the month perhaps. He’d even nominate himself.

Novak drops a kiss on his forehead, light brush of lips, and in answer something soft flutters in the pit of Andy’s stomach, alongside a startled thread of dismay. _No, no_ , he insists to himself with abrupt panic, he’s _not_ going to fall in love with an almost-stranger on the Tube, not when it’s just orgasm delusion and adrenaline. He’s not that much of an idiot.

( _You’re totally that much of an idiot_ , his common sense-voice points out. Andy’s pretty good at ignoring it by now though.)

‘I can’t believe we got away with it,’ he mutters to fill the silence. Novak makes an incoherent sound like a chicken being strangled and suddenly Andy’s pushed upright with Novak gripping his shoulders, eyes wide.

‘Wait. You have not done that before? You didn’t _know_ it could be done?’

‘Er,’ Andy says, eloquently, and Novak drops his face into his hands, sprawling back into his seat with what sounds like a Serbian curse.

‘I will be locked up for rest of my career,’ he says, despair muffled into his palms. ‘This was me to prove I am responsible. That I am to be trusted. Instead, I am lost, probably to be arrested by army of angry English police for- for _accidental fucking_. I am disgrace to everything.’

 _Right_ , Andy thinks. He tries to ignore the sinking feeling running rampant where the fluttery softness had sat in his stomach just a moment ago and focuses on carefully rearranging himself back in his jeans – ruined, come soaked in streaks and wow, he’s blitzing through the Ten Ways to Humiliate Yourself bucket list tonight. Without looking at Novak he edges back in his seat, clumsily reassembling the lines he’d almost crossed between them. It was nice, it’ll make a great anecdote one day but back to reality, make strategic retreat before Novak remembers whose idea this entire thing was-

Which is when he realises the train is quiet, sitting in a station with the doors open. End of the line and fuck _fuck_ , someone will be coming to check the carriages any minute.

‘Hey,’ he says, swallowing against the traitorous way his voice wants to bend out of shape around the words, ‘sorry but we need to go. I can point you towards Wimbledon if you still- if you want.’

Novak looks up sharp and bewildered, staring at Andy as if he’s grown a second head. There’s still a flush over his cheeks, lips kiss-puffy and Andy experiences a pang of regret so fierce it steals his breath away. God, it’s not _fair._

‘What?’ Novak sounds honestly confused, maybe edged with a flicker of hurt. ‘You are not going? After-’ He gestures between them, the come splatters and both of them obviously rumpled but Andy knows he means everything else too, the pull toward each other like magnetism, like the sharp relief of finding something you hadn’t realised was lost. ‘I thought-’

He stops, shoulders curling in on himself with a sharp inhale. ‘I mean, it is fine if you don’t want. Sorry.’

Tentative, not letting his voice tilt into anything like hopeful because optimism is just another way of asking for a kick in the stomach, Andy lets himself voice the question. ‘What?’

‘I thought-’ Novak frowns, and straightens up with the air of bracing himself even as he looks Andy direct in the eye.

‘Come home with me?’ he asks. ‘Please? I am perhaps not in London long and I cannot escape to ride your Tube all night in hope I meet you again, probably not ever, and I would like to meet you again, I _like_ you although I have just met you and you- you must hear this always, I’m sorry. Always I say the wrong thing.’

‘No,’ Andy says and has to pause to take a breath, steady himself against the hope shivering fragile in his chest, ‘No that sounds like the right thing this time.’

And he's definitely an idiot, because he'd willingly humiliate himself a thousand times for the smile that lights up Novak’s face.

It’s not until they’re off the train and walking toward the corridor between platforms that it occurs to him to wonder, exactly what Novak thinks he just asked. If it was nothing more than asking _come home with me_ to a stranger who offered help and a blowjob on the Tube, inviting Andy for an honest one night stand or something more, something like a promise in the shy curve of his mouth as he said _I like you_.

Or if he thinks he just hired himself a prostitute for the night.

Andy doesn’t like complicated. It’s made selling himself for money that much easier, the urge to sidle away when people get too close, too _interested_ , that’s been ingrained in every fibre of him as long as he can remember. A long time ago maybe, he indulged in the occasional leap of faith but it’s simpler, he’s found, to go into situations expecting the worst. It’s better to be pleasantly surprised occasionally than live constantly with the gut-wrench of disappointment.

So he doesn’t waste time fooling himself. Slanting a sideways look at Novak, chattering happily beside him as they walk up the platform, Andy lets the knowledge settle into the pit of his stomach that this is a business transaction, nothing more. Professional, he’s a _professional_ god damn it, and ruthlessly he squashes the flicker of wishful thinking before it has time to take root. Novak’s obviously rich, obviously up for it, and Andy’s caught his eye like a piece of shiny on a shelf somewhere, to be picked up like his expensive accessories. This is nothing more than the universe gifting Andy his rent cheque for a month.

Mid-expansive gesture as he details the events of his night that led him to the Tube, Novak turns to flash him a smile and Andy quirks his mouth up to grin before he can stop himself. _Idiot_.

‘You okay?’ Novak queries, doesn’t wait for Andy to respond before he glances down at Andy’s bare chest, and pulls an exasperated face. ‘You’re cold, I am an idiot. Here.’ And he shakes out the hoodie he’d balled beneath his arm when Andy half-dragged him off the train, pausing mid-stride to hold it up as if Andy’s five years old.

Despite the close warmth of the Underground, Andy hasn’t quite shaken the damp ache that sank into his bones as he shivered his way through Westminster. After a startled pause, he steps in to slide into the hoodie with a half-turn to get his arm through the sleeve and lets Novak settle it onto his shoulders, lean in close and brush his mouth over the back of Andy’s neck in a not-quite kiss.

‘Not that I did not ah, _appreciate_ the view,’ he murmurs, soft-edged with teasing and Andy swallows hard. They could be just another couple heading home after a late night, caught in a moment of unguarded affection; anyone walking onto the quiet, empty stretch of platform would assume exactly that.

His voice comes out rusty with effort, staring down at his ripped Chucks. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll steal it?’

‘Why?’ Novak says, mouth dipping to kiss the base of Andy’s neck with a light, ticklish huff of amusement. ‘Are you a thief also? I think not, because then you would not let someone steal your shirt. Which, I should ask since you have heard my night – how _did_ you lose it?’

Andy hasn’t heard a word of Novak’s chatter about his night beyond the words _brother_ and _dare_ , but he’s loathe to drag up the humiliation of his own evening to cover his distraction. Then again, this doesn’t _matter_ , not as if he’ll see Novak again after tonight to have to keep his story straight and he opens his mouth to stumble out something dismissive.

One syllable in, he’s interrupted by the clatter of heavy footsteps from the stairs at the end of the platform. Not a big deal; they’re both clothed perfectly acceptably now and he’s about to dismiss his evening with a careful lie when Novak yanks away, sharp and with the echo of a panicked gasp lost between them.

When Andy twists round, the Serb is a metre away and staring intently at the floor. His carefully blank expression is belied by the flush colouring his cheeks but he doesn’t look up, almost tucking his face into his chest.

‘Oi.’ The voice comes from over by the stairs, from the owner of the heavy feet, and Andy’s glance finds a TFL employee giving them tourist-weary Londoner’s glare from beneath bushy eyebrows. ‘This train isn’t in service. You’ll have to leave the platform.’

‘Alright, we’re just going,’ Andy soothes but the guy doesn’t move until Andy reaches out, grabs Novak’s hand and tows him along to the stairs. Novak goes willingly but without lifting his head, turning away slightly as they pass the glaring man.

As if he’s afraid to be recognised, Andy allows himself to acknowledge with a sinking sensation as they cross the corridor to the other platform in silence that’s turned suddenly uncomfortable. There’s a nagging feeling, worrying at his certainty that this is nothing but a simple trick, one night with a rich tourist who’s too stupid to book a hotel in central London. Maybe Novak’s an actor, just famous enough to be recognised but not enough that Andy’s heard of him. Maybe he’s a business mogul. Maybe he doesn’t have a fucking ticket. _Anything_ , except the possibility Andy’s refusing to let himself consider.

‘You didn’t stop me,’ he says before engaging his brain-to-mouth filter. Kicks himself as Novak looks up, wide-eyed, but he’s already dropped himself in it; he’s committed now, may as well salt the earth before he lets himself sink roots. ‘On the train, when someone got on. If you were bothered about being recognised, you’d have stopped me.’

‘I wasn’t-’ Whatever Novak’s about to lie gets cut off at Andy’s frown, the Serb taking a breath and blowing it out in defeat.

‘Okay,’ he admits, ducking his head with a bashful air that looks at least half-faked to mask genuine nerves, ‘I am worried I will be noticed. On the train it was just a girl on her phone, she never look up and I was- hm, _distracted_ , but if a journalist, or someone I know, sees we may have big problem.’

They’ve ground to a halt halfway between platforms, stairs up to the ticket barriers and exit to one side. There’s still no one around and the TFL guy didn’t follow them - so there’s no one to acknowledge Andy taking a cowardly step backwards.

No one except himself and the flicker of dismay twisting the joy from Novak’s smile.

‘Andy?’ he says, pitched too high as the nerves get the upper hand and in that second he sounds as young as Andy first thought he was, flashy clothes and accessories all false confidence as he stumbles over English in his explanation. ‘This isn’t a problem, no? I’m not even famous, not like I am George Clooney you know, but it is Wimbledon and more people are watching us than usual so I must be careful. Your journalists would love to catch one of us out, make a fuss for two weeks. It isn’t- isn't a big deal, to be careful?'

‘Wimbledon.’ Andy hears his own voice as if from far away, detached from the sound by the descending numbness. Just for a minute there, he’d believed in luck and forgotten that the universe doesn’t believe in it for him in return, just in setting him up for the inevitable gut-punch of hurt every time. Because he keeps _falling for it_ , for the hope of _this time, maybe._ Disappointment in himself is a familiar bitterness, clawing at his chest until it’s hard to breathe.

Obviously at a loss for how they went from tactile flirting to staring at each other arms-length apart, Novak half-lifts his hand as if to reach out, and freezes when Andy’s shoulders hunch defensively.

‘Andy?’ he says again as if it’s the magic word that might decode the situation, tone coaxing. Still half-amused behind the anxiety, as if he thinks he's being teased. ‘What’s the matter? I’m only a tennis player.’

The broken sound that jerks from Andy’s throat is involuntary, exhaled out through clenched teeth and Novak’s expression wipes to alarm. When he reaches out in earnest this time Andy stumbles back across the corridor, catching himself on the cold metal handrail by the stairs.

‘I’m sorry,’ he croaks, winded by the sheer rush of misery, by the hurt in Novak’s wide eyes, ‘I- I can’t. I’m so sorry. It’s not you, it’s- I have to go.’

Before he lets himself be persuaded out of it by the stubborn way Novak’s squaring his shoulders for the argument, he turns and sprints up the stairs.

‘ _Andy!_ ’

There’s footsteps on the tiles behind him but he’s got a head start and an adrenaline-fuelled disregard for safety, taking four steps at a time and cracking his elbow on the wall when he takes the corner at the top too sharp, gasping at the dizzy wash of pain. Fumbles his Oyster free of his jeans one-handed and he’s through the barriers and out, catching a blinding face-full of rain as he legs it down the street.

Behind him, Novak’s voice raises in argument with someone. He probably tried to go through the turnstiles without his ticket and the guard pulled him up. That or he’s yelling insults at Andy’s retreating back.

No matter, it’s delay enough for Andy to set his numb feet into a steady sprint, taking him away from Novak and all the temptation he almost fell for. Running away for the second time tonight, he thinks bitterly, because it’s the only thing he’s ever been any good at.

This will be better for everyone, anyway. Even if he was stupid enough to fall for Novak, it’s not as if the Serb thought of him as anything more than a whore to be bought for the night, something he needed to _be careful_ to keep hidden.

Better to cut all ties now before it gets complicated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim tries to match-make and Andy tries not to make more terrible life choices, with dubious results all round.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update on time! For my 'deadlines are more like guidelines actually' approach, this is basically miraculous. However, Chapter 3 is on course for next Thursday or Friday so er, we might even make this a habit.
> 
> Please see the end of chapter one for warnings for the entire fic.

 

 

 

Twelve hours later, Andy’s got _complicated_ sitting on the polished bar top in front of him.

‘Let me run this through one more time to make sure I’ve got it,’ Kim says in a tone that tilts entirely too far towards hilarity for Andy’s comfort. ‘Last night you gave Novak Djokovic, the third best tennis player in the world right now, a blowjob on the Tube. And then basically mugged him for his phone and ran away because he asked you on a date. No, sorry- a _sex_ date.’

Andy’s got his head down on the bar, arms folded around him so he won’t catch a glimpse of the sleek phone sitting between them like the physical manifestation of the universe’s vendetta against him. His forehead is resting in a damp patch that smells like someone’s overpriced pint but honestly, at this point he feels resigned to living in perpetual humiliation. Running from it hasn’t got him anywhere.

‘I didn’t mug him,’ he says into the puddle of beer. ‘I forgot I was wearing his hoodie and I didn’t know his phone was in the pocket.’

‘So you ran away with it,’ Kim presses mercilessly. ‘Like a mugger. Because you were- what? Afraid you might fall for the charming, rich, incredibly hot and athletic man who practically begged to spend time with you?’

He probably shouldn’t have repeated Novak’s stumbled offer to her word-for-word. Shouldn’t have told her at all if he was smart but he’d woken up this morning beneath his threadbare sheets, fuzzily exhausted after an agonizingly long trip home by night bus and still rain-damp wrapped up in Novak’s hoodie. He’d panicked when an alarm blared from the zip-pocket (who sets their alarm for seven-thirty a.m. anyway? Fucking tennis players); too sleep-disorientated and high on terror to focus after discovering the phone, he’d been dialling Kim’s number before his brain engaged enough for a risk assessment to his dignity.

It’s not entirely his fault. She’s waged a not-subtle campaign for three years to brainwash him into unquestioning honesty with her at all times, ostensibly to offset the web of lies he tells for his job but mostly because she's relentlessly, _shamelessly_ nosy and ruthless about wearing him down until it's just easier to overshare.

Plus her bullshit detector is uncanny. She would've taken one look at his face even if he'd never mentioned Novak, and said, _what the fuck happened to you; times, dates, dirty details right now._

‘Don’t make it sound like that,’ he mutters instead of all the curse words he’d like to use – that he has been using pretty continuously since he panic-flailed himself into falling out of bed. ‘ _Pretty Woman_ was a ludicrous movie and I am not Julia Roberts.’

Kim hums a sympathetic sound. ‘Oh Rusty, you really aren’t. Although you know if you let it grow, you’d have the same hair. Maybe it’s the curls that attract the charming knights in shining armour.’

'This _isn't funny_.'

'It's a little bit funny,' Kim disagrees and pats the rain-frizzy disaster of his hair when he makes a sound like a cat getting kicked. 'Andy, it's fine. His phone isn't locked and his coach's number is in there. Call him and explain that you're friends and Novak left his phone last night, could you speak to him to sort picking it up. You'll have to find actual words to apologise instead of your usual incoherent bear growls but Novak seemed nice, behind the immature frat boy front. He'll forgive you.'

'I don't want to be forgiven,' Andy mumbles. Then what she said actually registers through the misery and he jerks upright to stare at her, clutching at the edge of the over-waxed bar to keep from falling off his chair in horror.

'Wait. He ' _seemed nice_ '?! As in, you have-his-poster-in-your-locker-nice, or we've-been-introduced- _in-person-_ because-I-have-the-worst-luck-in-the-history-of-the human-race-nice?'

Kim arches an eyebrow, most likely debating whether telling the truth will push him over into a tantrum versus the effort of coming up with a convincing lie. She's casually gorgeous as usual, even in her black work shirt with her name embroidered in silver below the bar logo, blond tumble of hair twisted up in a messy chignon and coffee grounds from the cappuccino machine dusting one cheek. The bar’s quiet this early in the day and there’s just a couple of tourists taking shelter from the weather in the artfully-lit booths with their flock of Harrods bags and extortionately-priced espressos, but there's already a small fortune of pound coins in the tip jar on the bar.

If Andy was half as good a hooker as Kim is at bartending, he wouldn't have had to spend fifteen minutes in Tesco this morning debating if he could stand drinking his tea without milk this week so he could afford to treat himself to a Mars Bar.

He used to think his life would be easier if he'd fallen for her instead, that night three years ago. By the time she'd casually mentioned tennis, they were already too far past the overshare point of no return for him to make clean break, settling together in a way he’s never found with anyone else. But somewhere along the way to becoming familiar furniture in each other's lives, they’d missed the sidestep into romance too. Maybe it was the hooker thing, maybe it’s just that Andy could never bring himself to ask the question but he’s grateful, when he lets himself give his feelings for her any name at all. She’s the only one left who hasn’t given up on him.

'My dad introduced me to Novak once, about a year ago,' she admits finally and grins as Andy thumps his forehead back down into the beer with a groan. ‘I think he was hoping we’d hook up to give him more pull with the men’s side of the tour but ah, let's just say it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.’

‘What,’ Andy mumbles into the bar top, ‘did you mug him too?’

Kim laughs. ‘Nice try but if you really want to know, you should ask Novak. By calling his coach. _Today._ ’

Ultimatum delivered, Andy's saved from arguing when one of the tourists comes over to ask for more coffees. Kim moves away in a whirl of milk steaming and professionalism and Andy's left alone to wallow alone in the wreckage of his dignity for a few minutes, wondering if she’s right.

It's not that he wants to keep Novak's phone because it represents the possibility of seeing him again, he argues with himself. Not at _all_ , no matter the flicker that might've been excitement when he realised where the alarm was coming from, scrambling to unzip the hoodie pocket with clumsy, half-asleep fingers in case it was a call. Panicked suddenly in case he'd miss the chance to hear Novak again, amused and teasing from his probably-enormous bed in Wimbledon village, demanding to know why he'd been left abandoned in the maze of outer London.

Briefly he'd fantasised about Novak spread across white sheets, tan burnished in the sunlight filtering in through wide windows and the laughter curving his lush mouth at Andy's stammered apology. Wondered if the rest of Novak was as toned as his arms and what he liked with men, if he already knew or if Andy would be mapping uncharted territory when he slid between the expensive sheets and explored.

Then he'd heard the rain hammering against the badly-fitting window in his rat-hole of a kitchen, seen the phone screen flash up the alarm symbol with something in (he guessed) Serbian followed by an excessive line of exclamation marks, and realised Novak would never call him because, as far as he was concerned, Andy’s nothing more than a whore and a thief.

Novak probably doesn’t even want him to apologise. Novak probably never wants to see him again.

So when Kim’s finished charging the tourists the GDP of a medium-small country for two cappuccinos and wandered back to lean on the bar opposite, he pushes Novak’s phone over to her with a fingertip before he can reconsider.

‘Do you think you can get this back to No- to him?’ he asks before she can comment, fixing his eyes on a point just over her left shoulder so he won’t see her sharp disappointment. ‘Either you or your dad, but if it’s him _please_ don’t tell him why.’

Andy’s made a point of avoiding the details but he knows Kim’s father is a retired tennis player, some sort of coach on the women’s tennis tour, and that he’s deceptively-mild in the same manner used by his daughter to trick everyone into agreeing with her before they’ve even noticed they’re having an argument. Andy’s met him once, for five minutes in a Tesco Express in Hammersmith with Kim, and barely made it out of the encounter without accidentally admitting that yes, he really was a degenerate prostitute rather than the ‘friend from work’ Kim introduced him as, without even realising what he was saying.

It hadn’t helped that he’d been running on exhaustion, still wearing work clothes from the night before and someone else’s eyeliner smudged all over his face. By the time he managed to escape, he’d been giving serious thought to suffocating himself with a spare Tesco bag.

Kim, of course, finds his legitimate and reasonable terror of her father hilarious.

“What?’ she asks, picking up Novak’s phone and when Andy risks a look she’s flipping absently through something on the screen, ‘you mean I shouldn’t go to my dad and say “hey, this male hooker I’m friends with sort-of-borrowed Novak’s phone by accident following sexual relations with him in a public train and would very much like to return it without having to apologise to Novak like a grown-up, you think you can help?” Really? I bet that’d go down great at Casa Sears.’

‘Yeah, great if you want to get me _murdered in my sleep_.’

‘Rusty, my dad coaches tennis players. He doesn’t work for MI5.’

Andy resists the urge to say he’d have preferred the spies. He’s tried to be subtle about his tennis aversion but Kim’s smart and she hints often enough for him to know she’s picked up on it, that it nags at her like an itch because his past is the one thing she’s never been able to beg, plead, or bribe out of him. Mostly these days she’ll brush past it, given up for a lost cause, but every now and then she’ll just- _push_.

Like now, when – still without looking up from the phone – she says with affected casualness, ‘I could always get my dad to find out where Novak’s staying and you could drop it off in person? It’s not as if Wimbledon is far to go.’

 _Oh god no._ Aside from Wimbledon being a no man’s land to him in the summer, Andy can’t imagine anything worse than showing up at Novak’s door like a pathetic stray, having to face the horror dawning in his eyes as he realizes the hooker he picked up on the Tube followed him home.

The memory flits through his head of the other guy from last night, the one he definitely _hadn’t_ given a blowjob, and the open disgust when he’d opened the door to Andy’s knock, ‘ _I thought your agency said you were discreet and look at you, standing there flaunting your whore self to the entire street.’_

Imagining the same words in Novak’s accented drawl feels like getting thumped, suddenly raw all over with imagined hurt. He has to take a breath before he can find his voice to fend off Kim.

‘I think it’s better for everyone if I don’t gatecrash the house of the rich, famous tennis player without an invitation, right? I don’t fancy being kicked out on my arse again.’

‘You had an invitation last night,’ Kim points out but her sigh says she’s conceding the fight. ‘Okay, it’s your choice but remember, not everything is always going to end up being the worst case disaster scenario alright? Don’t delete this.’

‘Delete what?’ Andy says blankly before his own phone vibrates in his pocket. Pulling it out, he’s greeted with a missed call from new number and it takes all of a second to connect that with Novak’s phone still in Kim’s hands. ‘Oh no, Kim fucking hell _no._ Don’t you dare leave my number in there when you give it back, that’s not fair!’

Kim turns Novak’s phone around to show him the screen, the call history up, a pop-up saying _history deleted._ ‘You’re right, it wouldn’t be fair because Novak isn’t the one who needs to make the decision to apologise. And now you have his number to call when you get your head out your ass, right?’ When Andy hesitates, she frowns in a way that means she’s not letting him wriggle out of this one. ‘ _Right_?’

‘Why are you pushing this?’ The question comes out edged in bewilderment rather than the accusation Andy intended, snagging on a fragile edge that makes him wince. ‘It was just a stupid few minutes on the Tube, that’s all. It’s not as if he asked me to marry him. You said you didn’t even really _like_ him.’

One of the tourists is getting up again in the corner of his eye, heading back to the bar but for once Kim doesn’t leap into professional bartender mode. Instead she leans in, gaze intent on him until Andy shifts uncomfortably, feeling opened up and transparent.

Kim’s mouth curves in something too small to be called a smile. ‘Andy,’ she says, abandoning her usual nickname for him for once, dropping her voice low for all that they’re practically alone in the bar, ‘Novak’s rich and famous right? And because I know you treat any mention of tennis like it’s an infectious disease you probably don’t know this, but he’s definitely not out of the closet publicly. Getting caught with a man – never mind a hooker – would be a huge problem for him, personally and professionally.’

The raw hurt is back, balling in Andy’s throat like solid misery that makes his voice creak when he says, ‘So?’

Kim lifts an eyebrow. ‘He asked you to _go_ _home_ with him. I know that your people skills are bizarrely terrible for someone in your line of work, but you have to realise what that means.’

She squeezes his hand as she goes to serve the waiting customer, but Andy barely notices. He feels like the floor’s dropped out from under him, like he’ll fall as soon as he loosens his death grip on the edge of the bar.

Without prompting his mind flashes up the memory of how Novak had looked as he said _I like you_ , the flicker of his dark lashes as he glanced down, hesitant and shy, the flash of white teeth as he worried at his kiss-puffy lips. At the obvious nerves Andy had been too busy writing off as anxiety over hiring a prostitute, without realizing Novak was taking a massive leap of faith in Andy by even asking – he had to know Andy would realise who he was, that there was a chance he’d be selling his story to the _Daily Mail_ twenty-four hours later.

And Andy had rewarded that by abandoning him, lost in London.

He’s still sitting in numb silence when Kim comes back, striding with purposeful steps that suggest he’s in for another round of call-him-right-now until she reaches him, pauses. He must look all kinds of awful because she squeezes his hand again instead, and Novak’s phone vanishes from the bar between them into the pocket of her cardigan.

Andy folds his hands together carefully in a white-knuckled grip and tries to stop feeling as if he’s lost something. It never belonged to him in the first place.

‘So Rusty,’ she says, tone brusque as she busies herself cleaning the taps, probably so Andy can get a hold on the threatening tears without either of them having to acknowledge it, ‘you should come over to mine on Monday night. My last deadline is that afternoon so I’ll either need to drown my sorrows at how terribly it went or celebrate my imminent stardom in the international art world. Either way, I have a fridge full of rosé and _Iron Man_ courtesy of that dodgy DVD stall in Camden Market. They've had some quality-control lately so it probably won’t even set my TV on fire again. What do you say?’

The crushing misery doesn’t fade but it eases, just a little. Maybe by Monday he’ll have found the words to apologise to Novak, or maybe, in a few days it won’t feel quite so much like a pit’s opened up beneath his feet and he’ll sit on Kim’s IKEA sofa in her tiny, cosy box of a student flat, and let her talk him into making the call after all. It's not as if the tennis problem will go away but maybe he can make excuses – maybe Novak won't want to been seen around Wimbledon with a hooker anyway; after all, meeting for illicit sex is at least eighty percent of the reason that people invented hotels.

And maybe if Novak’s angry about him running away, giving him a few days to cool off might help.

‘Yeah,’ he says, voice grating a little. ‘I could probably get Monday off. They owe me one for last night anyway, since I doubt they’ll let me put a new shirt in as expenses.’

Kim’s smile goes frosty in an instant. Her ease with Andy’s job is balanced by a dislike for his management agency bordering on vicious, since that _one time_ with the bondage club, that asshole client, and because he’s still wary of hospitals in case there’s a missing persons flag on his records he’d gone to her flat instead, because it was nearest and he was shaking too hard to even walk straight.

She’d taken one look at his ghost-pale face, the bruises imprinted around his wrists (around all of him, although he’d struggled painfully back into his shirt that time), and it’d been all he could do to prise his phone from her hand before she called the agency demanding they give back the third of his pay they took as their cut. Part of it, of the thick wad of bills he meets his boss to hand over once a month, is supposed to go to the agency-managed security team, several ex-bouncers and a part-time wrestler who could snap Andy in half with his pinkie finger, who answer calls from the hookers in case they need a little muscle showing up – it’s not as if the police are ever an option, illegal profession and all.

The agency pitches it as equal-opportunity coverage but they mostly stick pretty close to the girls and figure the guys can look after themselves. They don’t even pick up for Andy’s number any more.

Which is _fine_. Occasional hardly-serious-at-all suffocation incidents with non-withstanding.

‘I can look after myself,’ he insists, trying to ignore the uncertain edge to it, Kim’s disbelieving snort in answer. ‘I _can_. I was fine last night.’

‘Yes, thanks to Novak.’

‘Okay no, _he_ was the one trying to get to Wimbledon on the wrong fucking Tube line. He would’ve ended up wandering around the back alleys of Watford all night without me.’ Andy pauses to wince at a sudden thought. ‘Maybe he did anyway. Shit.’

‘Relax,’ Kim says with a careless hand wave at the giant flat-screen over in the corner, BBC News scrolling on an infinite loop, ‘it would’ve been headlines if he’d been stabbed.’

Ignoring Andy’s incredulous glare, she fixes him with a look that brooks no argument. ‘Right, so Monday? Do you think you can stay out of trouble that long? I’m going to have to turn my phone off at night because all my flatmates had their final deadlines this week and the assholes keep butt-dialling me while they’re out celebrating.’

‘Shockingly, I can actually survive without a nanny,’ Andy says drily. ‘I’ll be fine for a few days while you finish qualifying to conquer the world.’ Glancing up, he checks the stylised clock built into the mirrored wall behind the bar. ‘In fact I’ve got a booking this afternoon, so I’ll leave you to practice your doodling.’

Kim smiles wistfully. ‘I wish my tutor could hear you call three years of intensive graphic design _doodling_ , except he wouldn’t be able to mark my spectacular and groundbreaking portfolio if he expires in shock. Who’s up this afternoon?’

Andy rolls his eyes. For all that he’d told Novak he doesn’t talk about clients, he gives a little more to Kim these days, if only so she won’t try to hire a SWAT team to follow him around for safety. Or more likely, take to lurking outside his appointments with a baseball bat and an attitude; her conviction in his inability to stand up for himself would be mortifying, if he could bring himself to forget that she’s literally the only person in the world who’d care if he ends up Jack the Ripper’d in an alleyway (in hindsight, _From Hell_ had been a poor movie choice for them last Halloween).

‘Don’t panic,’ he says, ‘he’s a regular. Well, sort of- he’s always in town on business this time of year. He tips like a Texas oil baron but he’s a total softie, apologises for every bruise. I think he’s closeted so he's just grateful to get some dick.’

‘Think?’ Kim pushes and Andy gives her his best hooker poker-face.

‘Those in my profession cannot afford to kiss and tell,’ he says in a monotone, before breaking character to grin. ‘Also, I’m just guessing. He’s Argentinean and he speaks like three and a half words of English.’

Kim falls into the trap he’s set like clockwork. ‘How can he speak half a word?’

‘I think he can say _fuck_ ,’ Andy says, deadpan, ‘but I’ve never heard him get out more than half a syllable before I do what I’m told.’ Grinning at her half-scandalised, half-laughing gasp he makes a timely retreat towards the door, ducking the dishcloth she throws after him despite the wide-eyed disapproval of the two tourists.

He waits until he’s halfway down the street before taking his phone out and saving Novak’s number into his contacts. Just in case.

 

 

It’s not until he’s on the way to his appointment later, showered and shaved and wearing his spare jeans, that his phone goes. He has to stop in the middle of the pavement and extricate it from overly-tight denim because these jeans shrunk in the last wash, haste-clumsy fingers almost dropping it as it slides free. Ignoring glares from the rush-hour commuters dodging around him, he looks at the screen and his flicker of hope dies.

He answers the phone with his most monotone lack of warmth. ‘Boss.’

‘Andy, sweetheart,’ Annalise purrs down the line, sharp-edged in the refined pronunciation she applies as carefully as her immaculate make-up whenever Andy meets her to settle his pay. ‘You didn’t check in last night, I was worried.’

‘Yeah, I guess you didn’t see the four missed calls when I tried and no one picked up.’ Andy backs into a niche between a Starbucks and an M&S Food, taking shelter from the half-hearted patter of rain. ‘You and the security team must’ve all been busy together while I was getting my arse kicked out on the street.’

His boss’ tone dips into glacial disapproval. ‘Now Andy, less of the attitude please. I set that client up for you personally and I was confident you could handle it. Imagine how disappointed I was when he called to say you’d reacted so unprofessionally and left early-‘

‘He freaked and told me to get the _fuck_ out of his flat!’

Andy realises he’s shouting when the passers-by skitter around him in a wary circle without looking, the tried-and-tested London defence method of The Crazy Person Does Not Exist If You Don’t Acknowledge the Crazy Person. Taking a breath, he forces his fingers to ease their grip where he’s clutching the phone to his ear so hard the edges are imprinting on his skin.

‘I don’t know why he’s complaining,’ he says, controlling it down to tight-packed fury. ‘I didn’t take the money and he still has my shirt. So what if he didn’t get his dick sucked?’

A passing woman in a suit and red heels forgets herself enough to give him a startled look. Andy trades a grimace of apology and backs further into the shadow of the wall, tucking himself tightly inward.

Annalise makes a disapproving sound, muted like it’s hummed between clenched teeth. ‘Oh Andy. It’s just not good enough. You know we have certain standards to maintain and abandoning an appointment early is just unacceptable. Now, I've smoothed things over with the client and he’s willing to make allowances for last night on certain conditions.’

Panic, familiar and well-worn, creeps in around the edges of Andy’s flare of determination. He knows this song and dance and he's tired of it suddenly, of his feelings being the expendable ones just because they don’t come with a price tag.

‘No. I’m not going back. He’s made it pretty clear I’m not his type so get one of the others to do it.’

‘He doesn’t want one of the others; he wants you. He’s assured me there won’t be a repeat of last night as long as you act professionally this time, sweetheart. He’ll even throw in a bonus for you making the trip twice.’

Standing in an alleyway with rain soaking through his worn jacket and frizzing his optimistically-gelled hair, Andy stares out at the commuters rushing past. All of them with work outfits and smart shoes, offices and homes to go to and none of them sparing him a glance. He’d thought, once, getting trapped in that routine would be the worst thing in the world, run the length of the country to avoid it.

And that’s far too close to self-pity, abruptly impatient with himself. One guy says _I like you_ after twenty minutes of chit-chat and suddenly he’s too precious to do his job, as if Novak even cares what he does and doesn’t do now? He needs the rent money and he’s already had too many possibilities snatched from his hands in the last twenty-four hours.

It might even distract him from staring at Novak’s number in his phone and wondering, _what if_.

‘When does he want me?’ he asks.

'Good boy,' Annalise says crisply, and Andy's flare of anger at being spoken to like a dog performing a trick is muted, muffled and buried in icy shame. 'Friday night, same time. Wear something fuckable sweetheart. You need to make a good impression, this time.'

 

*

 

Andy never intended to end up a prostitute.

No one ever does of course; that's one thing he thinks _Pretty Woman_ got right. People fall into it by accident or circumstance, coercion or desperation, for any number of reasons. He knows one of the guys at the agency has a Saturday job in Waterstone's. Another works as a PA in Westminster, probably spends his breaks sucking off shadow chancellors in supply cupboards.

It wasn't something Andy ever thought about. He didn't even have a boyfriend until he was fifteen and that’d lasted a grand total of twelve days, before the headmaster caught them groping behind the Maths classroom and Andy went home that day both suspended and single. He’d remained the latter (and the former more often than his mum liked) until despair drove him south.

He hadn't even meant to stay in London long, as much as he'd meant anything after he'd left that terrible admissions interview at Edinburgh University. Trudging across Waverley station with his overnight bag dragging at his shoulders, trying to work out how to tell his mum he was even more of a fuckup than everyone thought, he'd seen the London train pulling into the platform opposite and thought, he could just...not have the conversation. Go to London, crash in a hostel to get a bit of money from bar work or whatever, and be on a plane to Europe in a month. His passport was in his backpack thanks to the interview, asking him to prove who he was (no doubt so they could be absolutely certain to reject the right person).

He'd thought, travel for a while and by the time he came home he'd have a plan, a goal to offset his mum's fury at the fucking disaster he'd made of life so far. Before he'd quite finished thinking about it, Scotland was dwindling into the distance and he was forking out an astonishing amount for a one way ticket, hoping it was the first step to the rest of the world.

Except London was terrifying and vast, and even breathing the air seemed to eat money. The savings in his account that'd been squirrelled away for drunken student nights out and course books disappeared at a rate that had him shouting at ATMs in hopeless outrage and nowhere would hire him, the wire-thin incomprehensible Scot with too much hair and not enough practice at small talk. All too soon there'd been just thirty quid left between him and creeping home like a recalcitrant child.

Maybe that was why he begged a little too hard in the last upscale bar advertising a vacancy, raised his voice too loud – because after the manager told him to get out before he was thrown, one of the men who'd been grinning at the altercation from a nearby table got up to follow him outside.

'When you say desperate,' he'd said, cornering Andy up against the wall of the alley beside the bar, Andy's heart hammering at his ribs as he tried to dig himself an escape route through the dirty brickwork with his shoulder blades, 'it caught my attention, softhearted as I am. How would you like an audition?'

Tipping his head back against the wall, Andy breathed hard against the sick sensation of panic and gave the guy his best _fuck off_ look.

'Who says I want to work for you?' he'd challenged and the guy burst into laughter.

'There's a firecracker! Looks like you’re a fit for that crazy hair after all. Could be money in that attitude for you if you're up to it.'

Just broke enough, just desperate enough, Andy wavered.

'Money for what?'

The guy leaned in right up in his face, acrid with cigarette smoke curling around the heavy scent of his cologne, intoxicating and terrifying and just a little bit exciting all at once.

'Ever sucked a dick?'

There'd been a breathless second when the silence roared in Andy's ears and his stomach dropped like plunging over a rollercoaster and all he wanted to snarl was _leave me alone_ because crawling home as a failure couldn't be worse than this. He wasn't stupid enough to refuse to back down from the challenge, not this one time when running would be a _good_ thing.

Then, because he _is_ that stupid and always has been, he'd lifted his chin and arched his back to bring them together hip to ankle, contact-shock like being burned everywhere they touched, and drawled, 'What's it to you?'

It earned him a night with the guy – Shawn he'd called himself, although Andy noticed that wasn't the name on the buzzer for his flat – and the next morning when Andy woke in his expensive Kensington apartment, stretched out hoarse and sore on thousand-thread count sheets, Shawn crouched beside the bed to put an envelope and a phone beside him on the mattress.

The envelope held a thousand pounds in cash, clean but worn-in twenty pound notes. The phone had Annalise, full of Shawn's glowing recommendation and a job offer.

He'd thought for a thousand pound a night he'd be out in a couple of weeks, but after his first real appointment he'd called Annalise full of shortchanged-annoyance and she'd explained no, that’d been an introductory offer. 'A virgin's bonus, sweetheart.' For everything after, the agency took a cut and the shoebox of a flat Annalise found for him in Finchley – far distant from Shawn's elegant Kensington halls – took most of the rest.

Even after he realised that he'd been played for a sucker, he fooled himself into thinking _soon._ Soon he'd have enough; the train to Paris, the flight to Rome were just another booking away, another impersonal hotel room and one more businessman taking a week’s worth of stress out on someone who couldn’t get them fired. Tomorrow he’d wake up in Barcelona, sun-soaked and dusty in his mind's eye, the imagined grittiness of foreign dirt in his trainers almost close enough to feel.

He stopped dreaming around the second year but he hasn't acknowledged it yet, not really. After all he's great at running away, even from his own fantasies. Why break the habit of a lifetime?

The trouble – which he does acknowledge, if only in the darkness of hotel rooms when he’s lying on uncomfortable mattresses listening to the breathing of strangers – is, that after a lifetime of practice he still hasn’t learned not to run when he should stay, or how to stop dragging his feet when he should run.

 

*

 

Exhibit A in the ‘when he should’ve run stakes’ ends up, inevitably, being Friday night.

'Pick up,' he mutters, blood-tacky fingers trembling over the screen of his phone. ‘Damn it, _pick up._ ’

His voice comes out rasped raw, throat tight from yelling and the cold, the distinctly unsummer-like night clammy and chill through his shirt. The time on his phone said he’d been wandering for almost an hour before he hunkered down in this convenient doorway to call Kim, to beg her to find him a route home because his phone refuses to load Google, _you have exceeded your data allowance_ flashing up like a reprimand and he wonders if the universe sent out a memo: _don’t give Andy a break today_.

His Oyster card is back at- back _there_ too, coat folded neatly over his chair and left on the kitchen floor when he tipped it over on his staggered exit. Alongside it is the twenty quid he’d slipped in the card wallet in case his Oyster ran out or someone got enthusiastic enough with the whip to justify a taxi home – a contingency plan made, obviously, in a fit of spectacular idiocy.

Other people probably remember to keep their emergency travel money separate from their non-emergency travel method, in case they left one on the marble-tiled floor of an overpriced apartment near Westminster when they ran out in panic. People who have their shit together think of things like back-up strategies and checking their data plan before it’s all that stands between them and dying of exposure. People who aren’t Andy.

‘Pick up,’ he whispers again to the badly-lit selfie of Kim on the screen, blurred because she’d been holding the phone out of his reach to take it and they’d both been laughing, unsteady with it, getting sideways looks from everyone else in the bar. He’d thumbed the speaker on so he could rest the phone on his knees, hands shaking too badly to grip, and the not-answered ringing echoes around the pink-tinged darkness of the street, bouncing from the grimy brick and gaping dark eyes of office windows.

He has no clue where he is. His feet are insisting he must’ve walked to Milton Keynes by now but they’re numb and heavy with possible-fucking-frostbite so what the fuck do they know. At least he can’t feel the abrasive grit of London through his socks any more.

‘ _Hey, this is Kim,_ ’ chirps the phone as the ringing cuts off, _‘I’m probably too covered in paint to answer right now but if you’ll leave a message…_ ’

With a curse that cracks in the middle, Andy stabs at the button to hang up. It’s not as if he’s got a vast checklist of options, not with Kim incommunicado and the agency security ignoring his calls. He cut ties when he fled to London, friends included in case any of them got guilt-tripped into revealing his whereabouts, and in four years he’s never made it past the ‘casual acquaintance’ stage with anyone except Kim (and that was pretty much only down to her stubborn refusal to back off from his glare that first night in the bar). The agency discourages fraternisation to minimise gossip about clients and anyway, most of the other hookers treat Andy like a poor hick from the wilderness.

It hadn’t helped that he’s never made friends easily, tongue forever stumbling over the usual pleasantries to break the ice. It's been easier not to bother with the intricacies of a social life over the last few years, not with the weird hours he keeps and not when every new introduction eventually hit the wall of, ‘So what do you do?’ and his options were either stammer out a lie, or be met with invasive, judgmental questions, _‘oh but you don’t look like a whore’_ taking the trophy for his personal least favourite.

It hasn’t mattered until now; it’s been easy to shutter himself away, pare off the extras in the ongoing struggle that was simply making the rent every month.

All of which has added up to leave him here, with Kim as his only friend and Kim has her phone off because she thought he’d be smart enough to stick to his promise and avoid trouble for a few lousy days. It’s just, he’s down to five lonely oven chips in the freezer and a quarter of a Mars Bar in the fridge, and his rent is due next Thursday and he’s so tired-

Which is nothing but self-pitying excuses. He bites his lip too hard, grounding himself in the sharper pain than the concussed throb of his head, the bruised ache of the rest of him where he’d fallen a few times in his staggered wandering. _Get it together Murray._

Which was great advice in theory but practically, he’s low on options. Kim obviously can’t hear her phone, so there had to be another way. Could he call Directory Enquiries for her neighbour’s number and ask them to bang on the door? Or call a taxi…

...that he can’t pay for and doesn’t know where to direct to pick him anyway. He may as well call for a personal helicopter to pick him up; it’s equally realistic. _Godddammit,_ life would be so much easier if he was rich.

Which is when a thought hits, sharp and brilliant, _wait wait wait-_ Fumbling his cold-numbed hands over his phone screen, he brings up his contacts list on the second attempt and scrolls down, clumsy with haste. It’s only been two days and Kim’s been working on her portfolio every second she isn’t at the bar. Chances are, she still has Novak’s phone. If it’s on- if it’s still got battery-

Novak’s number is still there, almost a surprise after two days spent assiduously ignoring it. The numbers swim a little as he stares at them, fuzzy and dizzying and it can’t still be the drink, not the mouthful he’d had, but he pretends it is anyway because it’s better than admitting he might be about to cry in relief.

Praying that this time, this _one_ time, he’ll get lucky, Andy presses _call_ and waits as it connects, breathing out his relief as it rings once. The battery icon on his screen creeps down into the red but it’s fine, because Kim just needs to hear the ringing from whatever pocket she’s tucked Novak’s phone into, scramble out of bed or put down her paintbrush, four rings, five rings at most, and-

‘ _Halo_?’ a sleepy voice cuts through his calculations on how many seconds equate to steps across a bedroom in the dark. It echoes around the street because Andy automatically pressed the speakerphone when the ringing started and now he's frozen, silent, because he doesn’t think that’s quite English. And it’s definitely not Kim.

Which leads to one logical conclusion but he can’t process a reaction, can’t even _breathe_. It feels like his body short-circuited with panic the instant he heard the voice, worn soft at the edges with sleep and a burr of irritation, instantly familiar despite that. All he can do is stare at the timer counting up the seconds of the call, measuring the time he’s dedicated to silently freaking the fuck out.

He should hang up. Orders his numb hands to do exactly that but they’re disobediently stiff with shock and also, the snide voice of doom reminds him, he’s on his last drop of phone battery. If he hangs up now, he’ll most likely die of exposure.

Although, he probably will anyway. It’s not as if Novak’s going to rescue him.

On the other end of the line Novak says something incomprehensible, liquid consonants with a sharp edge but he cuts off abruptly with an inhale Andy hears even over the crackly connection. There’s another beat of silence and he wonders if Novak’s hung up.

Then- ‘Andy?’ Novak says, all the annoyance in his voice gone tentative. ‘Is this you?’

Startled, Andy opens his mouth to apologise – for waking Novak up, for calling this number at all, for being such a monumental asshole the other night. In his head he’s eloquent, apology sweet and honestly heartfelt as it spills out, and for a flicker of an instant he believes he might convince Novak to hear it out before he ends the call.

Instead of any of that, instead of even _words_ , the sound balled up in his throat emerges as a cracked sob.

‘Andy?!’ Rather than cutting the call off in disgust (Andy wouldn't blame him), Novak comes sharply awake over the line. ‘What is wrong?! Are you okay?’

 _I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?_ Andy says – or rather, that’s what he _intends_ to say. The traitorous misery tangles up in his mouth and what actually comes out, wavering pathetically with the effort of breathing back tears, is,

‘I don’t think so.’

He swallows but Novak’s quiet, leaving the silence open and it gives Andy the space to push down the weight of misery in his chest enough to let the words flood out. ‘I had an appointment tonight that went- not great. Fucking awful actually. He spiked my wine and I knew, I fucking knew it as soon as I took a sip but when I tried to leave, he tried to stop me and _nothing happened_ , I don’t know why I didn’t just go home except I fell over my feet like an idiot when he grabbed me and I hit my head on the table and I turned the wrong way for the Tube when I left and now-’

Catching himself before his voice cracks again takes an effort, biting the sound off with his teeth sunk in his lip and his eyes screwed shut against the burning humiliation. He hadn’t meant to let all that tumble out, even with the dizziness. He wishes his headache would ease from _skull-crushingly terrible_ down to plain _painful_ so he could focus enough to salvage the pieces of this disaster, ask if Novak is at least willing to Google the street name so Andy can work out where in fucking London he is, but he suspects he’s fucked that right up.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you,’ he says, opting for honesty. ‘I just needed directions and I thought- I was expecting Kim. You can hang up, it’s fine.’

Waiting for the expected muting of Novak’s breathing when he ends the call, to distract himself from the crushing urge to cry at the thought, Andy wonders what to do now. If he walks far enough in a straight line he might find someone to give him directions or he might stumble right into the Thames.

It’s probably a moot point; even thinking about standing up seems more effort than he’s got left in him.

‘Andy?’ Novak’s voice breaks through his meandering attempt at a Plan B and Andy blinks himself alert again, because somehow Novak is _still_ _there_. He even sounds urgent, as if it’s not the first time he’s said Andy’s name – though Andy’s certain he hadn’t fallen asleep or anything.

Well. Almost certain.

‘Yeah,’ he answers, only realising he’s shivering when his teeth chatter. ‘Yeah, s- _sorry_. Go back to sleep; you have tennis to play, right? S-sleep’s important.’

Instead Novak makes a soft sound, a gut-punched hum that almost sounds- hurt. Desperate. Except that can’t be right because he’s safe in his Wimbledon house with his perfect life, despite his ludicrous lack of a sense of direction that is in no way compensated for by having such lovely arms and- and shit, Andy may have said some or all of that out loud because Novak makes another sound that’s almost a laugh.

‘I do not think a local who is lost can accuse me of no direction sense,’ he says. It’s warm, and kind, and Andy has to swallow another sob because he can’t trust the affection threatening to well up beneath his misery. He doesn’t understand why Novak’s indulged this ridiculous conversation for so long as it is; he can’t lean on this as a lifeline.

Except, Novak doesn’t hang up, or go back to sleep, or demand to know why Andy even had his phone number. Instead, he asks an impossibly implausible question:

‘Where are you? Are there signs? Landmarks?’

‘Just this doorway,’ Andy says, wondering if Novak actually hung up a minute ago and this entire conversation is a concussed hallucination. Tipping his head back until his headache blooms to bright lights behind his eyelids, he squints around. ‘Oh there’s a sign. That’s helpful.’

‘What is it?’ Novak asks, then curses as there’s a clatter over the line. ‘Sorry, I trip on my bag- Andy? What does it say?’

‘I can’t read.’

Novak curses again, startled this time. ‘You can’t- do English not have school?!’

Andy makes an indignant noise that he regrets immediately at the echoing thump of pain in his head. ‘I’m Scottish, you twat. Of course I can _read_ , generally. I can’t read _right now_ because I’m having some uh, technical problems with the ability to focus.’ Pushing himself up an extra inch, he makes a supreme effort to un-fuzz his brain long enough to remember how letters work when they aren’t dancing an improbable tango. ‘It’s- it’s a company. The sign that is. It’s- Paper Pigeon Delivery Co, Herald- no, Gerald Street. Looks like no one’s been here in a while though, there’s junk mail all over the doorstep.’ He wonders if he can burn it to keep from freezing – only, for one thing he’d almost certainly start the Great Fire of London: The Sequel by accident, and for another he doesn’t have anything to light it with. So much for the diatribe he’d got about smoking being bad for him that one night in the bar, _thanks Kim._

‘Okay, okay, this is good. I have you on the Googlemap,’ Novak says after a minute and Andy wants to tell him how lovely his accent is ( _goddamn_ head injuries) but his teeth are chattering too hard. ‘Okay, I must get a car and then it is almost an hour. Andy, are you okay that long? Shall I call your police?’

‘No police!’ Andy blurts in panic. Shit, if Novak’s going to call the police he’ll have to move, but he really can’t feel his feet anymore so he’s not going to get far before he gets arrested for solicitation and he’s not coherent enough to talk his way out of it this time, fuck. ‘It’s fine, I’m fine, you should go back to sleep, I’ll manage.’ _How_ , he wonders.

‘No police! Andy I promise, no calling policemen but you must wait and stay on the phone with me yes? Keep talking.’

Andy’s so cold now, his thought process seems to be slowing to a crawl. Forming words takes every scrap of willpower he has left but he doesn’t want to disappoint Novak again.

‘Battery,’ he manages around the next shiver that wracks him, ‘going soon.’ As if it heard him, his phone beeps sadly from where it’s threatening to slide off his knee. ‘I can –talk but not, not long.’ In a rush of sudden anxiety that’s vague and formless and terrible, he finally forces out his apology: ‘Novak, I’m so s-sorry about the other night. It wasn’t you-’

‘Wait until you must tell it to my face,’ Novak cuts him off, tone all sharp edges. ‘Andy, you must promise to stay there. I’m not-’

With a final beep of protest, Andy’s phone flickers to black and Novak’s voice dies into silence. When Andy fumbles to see if he can turn it back on, his uncooperative hand catches the phone all wrong and it clatters away across the pavement, swallowed up by the hungry darkness.

 _Oh well,_ Andy thinks with exhausted resignation. Tucking his cold-wooden hands into his armpits, he lets his headache push his chin down until he’s a ball of huddled misery, sitting on a heap of mouldy junk mail in the uncharted wilds of London. He’d almost rather Novak didn’t find him after all because he must look a hundred kinds of pathetic right now.

Not that it matters when Novak’s hardly going to go traipsing all over London for someone he barely knows – doesn’t know at _all_ , not in any qualitative sense. He’ll probably make it to his bedroom door and then wonder what he’s doing, why he’s not just calling the police after all. If Andy doesn’t die of exposure first, he’ll have the charming job of lying to law enforcement about how he hit his head. He’s honestly not quite sure which he’d prefer.

At least he apologised. That’s one less thing to worry about.

He must lose time because he lifts his head what feels like minutes later and his t-shirt is soaked, but he doesn’t remember the rain shower. The next time, he thinks he hears a car on the next street and struggles to uncurl from his huddle, joints locked and uncooperative with cold, only to realise after an exhausting minute that the droning buzz of engines is a plane overhead anyway, hopelessly out of reach even if he ran out into the open street and waved.

 _I should’ve gone_ , he thinks in the disorientating haze of cold and confusion, _I should’ve just said fuck the rent and got the first plane somewhere. Anywhere._

Tilting his head back down, he rests his forehead on his numb arms and decides with delusional optimism to give it five more minutes. Then he’ll start walking.

The third time he surfaces from the half-drowsing fugue, Novak’s there.

‘Andy,’ he’s saying, close and yet somehow ringing distantly in Andy’s hearing, ‘hey Andy. Look at me, okay?’

‘I like looking at you,’ Andy mumbles, because apparently his brain has handed in notice and his mouth is running the show now. Hears Novak huff a laugh and then hands so warm they feel burning curve over Andy’s cheeks, tilting his head up.

‘Found you,’ Novak says, softly conspiratorial when Andy blinks at him. Andy’s not so sure because Novak’s outline is blurred and swimming in front of him, the streetlights running into brilliant liquid lines behind his head, but at least if he’s hallucinating then his hallucination is _warm._

‘We have a car,’ says the blurry, improbable Novak, ‘can you walk?’

‘Of course I can,’ Andy’s traitorous mouth insists without consulting his much-abused better judgement. Attempting to stretch out his legs and straighten up, he puts an arm out to brace himself and the ground somehow isn’t where it should be, Andy cursing as he tips sideways.

Those warm hands catch him, firm and sure on his shoulders.

‘Shall I carry you?’ Novak asks. Oddly he doesn’t sound amused at Andy’s disagreement with gravity, but rather muted with something Andy’s too confused to identify. All he can focus on is the callused fingers sliding up to comb back his damp hair, avoiding the bloody bump where his head hurts abominably and rubbing instead at his temples, soothing the roar of his headache down to a dull hum until Andy sighs an embarrassing moan of relief.

‘Sure you can carry me,’ he mumbles. ‘You can do whatever you want. No charge.’

Midway through sliding under his arms to lift him, Novak’s hands freeze. It’s just for a second, but alarm punches through the haze Andy’s wallowing in because _shit_ he’s said something wrong. This is why he avoids drinking with clients (or, at all if he can help it) because his tongue has a habit of tripping out unplanned honesty when he’s not watching it every second.

He starts to apologise for whatever misstep he made but Novak’s shifting to lift him again, leaning in at the same time to murmur in Andy’s ear, chapped lips pressing the words close between them as if trying to imprint them through Andy’s confusion.

‘We’ll talk about what you just say when you do not have a head injury, yes? I think we have some, how you say, cross wires.’

‘Mmm.’ Andy hums a vaguely agreeable sound and turns his face into Novak’s shoulder when he gets scooped up in a fucking bridal carry that he’s too dizzy to protest. Anyway, Novak’s like a furnace, like a sun going nova everywhere they touch and Andy curls hopelessly into the respite, clumsy fingers latching into Novak’s t-shirt.

His last thought before he drifts again is that Novak found him – Novak _looked_ – which means that this, this warmth and the relief washing through him as he thaws enough to feel again, is _his._

‘Anything you want,’ he mumbles into the beautiful, obviously-not-hallucinated curve of Novak’s neck and passes out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Novak excels at picking up the pieces and How Not to Talk to Girls At Parties; Andy tries not to ruin a perfectly good rescue by sticking his foot in his mouth. Marian's just not sure he has adequate sarcasm for this situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's late (I know) and it went up to five chapters (I know; I'm sorry) and it's really, really long (hopefully that makes up for the first two).
> 
> I don't tend to reply to comments very often because the way AO3 displays comment counts include answers and sometimes I use the number of comments when cherry-picking fic to read so I wish they didn't. Also I procrastinate about writing even when I *don't* have legitimate excuses; replying to comments when I should be writing ramps up the guilt. But I do love them a lot and author validation makes us feel that we're not writing in the void and also flail about in ridiculously undignified joy, so thank you for every one; they are very much loved and appreciated.

There’s a particular skillset that comes with being a hooker for any length of time. Some of it comes from innate quirks of character, everyone developing their own flair in the same way a secretary might develop a filing system, or a barista have a standard patter for customers but some things, the standard things, those they all needed to have spelled out and practiced the same way, everyone eventually ticking off the boxes to Sucking Dick and Selling Yourself 101.

For one, how to make sex noises that sound pornographic enough for client expectations without turning into a comedy sketch; for another, how to go loose and pliable, open, even when something hurt. The performance art of looking fuckable, sounding fuckable, and never, ever flinching where the client could see.

Andy had more to learn than most when he fell face-first into the oldest profession in the world but he likes to think there’s a few traits all his own that make him at least passable at his job. The stubborn refusal to back down from a challenge, even when his stomach twists with nausea as he lets himself be held down, stretched open and flayed apart inside and out. His sense of humour that he allows his regulars to wring from him like a reward, brief, bright moments of connection with every startled laugh. And his habit of sleeping so lightly that he wakes at the slightest noise, clinging to sleep restlessly by his fingertips ever since he was a teenager and just the sound of someone breathing too close could wake him.

It’s meant that, on the not infrequent-occasions a client pays for the entire night, Andy’s never in danger of oversleeping his welcome (and his paycheck). As a fringe benefit it’s also meant he wakes easily, abruptly alert without meandering in the confusion between sleep and awake; two blinks and he knows where he is even in an endless succession of mystery beds, facts assembled into the neat succession of clarity, _you are here_ a surety he clings to before he turns to face the client.

This time, when he opens his eyes to sunlight sieved through gauze curtains and dappled in shadows from unseen leaves as it falls across a wide, white expanse of empty sheets – for the first time in years, he has no idea where he is.

_Calm,_ he tells himself with panic singing the harmony to a dull ache in his head. _You’re in an empty bed, the window’s open as a potential escape route, and you’re-_ He moves his legs slightly, a bare rub of soundless movement, _– you’re wearing sweatpants._

It’s that which does it. After a second of confusion at the softness of the cloth (the only pair of sweatpants he owns is threadbare-thin, scratchy with frayed edges), he realises why it’s so unexpected; the last thing he remembers is jeans, damp and stiff with the rain and from sitting in the cold-

And Novak, scooping him up from the pavement and tucking him into a warm car, Andy drifting in and out with Novak’s arm around his shoulders and voices murmuring around him in a background hum to the purr of the engine. A half-remembered sting of antiseptic as someone cleaned his head with gentle hands, a forgotten question and mumbling agreement into the curve of Novak’s neck, tongue brushing skin with the clean tang of soap and the salt-warmth of Novak beneath. Novak, rescuing him for no reason other than Andy needed him to, oh _god_.

Kim is going to make _Pretty Woman_ jokes _forever_.

At least the leaf-dappled shadows and utter lack of traffic noise carried on the breeze through the window makes perfect sense now. He’s in Wimbledon village, wrapped up in a house expensive enough to merit a tree-filled garden and he’s safe, Novak no doubt somewhere nearby. He’ll panic about the Wimbledon part later, he decides, and rolls onto his back, careful of the sharp core of pain on his forehead, stretching out a cautious arm to either side.

No Novak there either. Huh.

Another thing he’s learned in the last four years working in his very specific branch of the service industry, is never to jump to solid conclusions without an evidence base. People are an intricate web of surprises he’s found, especially when they bare the hidden kinks from their dark and dusty recesses - so he tries not to assume anything from Novak installing him in the guest bedroom with clean sweatpants and no company, whether it be that Novak didn’t care enough to stay or that he cared enough to not want to impose. He’s grateful Novak saved him from dying of exposure and concussion sure; what more can he expect? Glorified houseguest is better than just another tragedy on the BBC this morning.

The empty bed still stings, whip-sharp dismay settling in the pit of his stomach if he lets himself think about it.

Now that he’s looking properly though, expensive house or not, this- this is a huge space to be a guest room. He’s already appreciated the stretch of bed as wide as the Atlantic but on the wall opposite there’s a shiny flat-screen TV bigger than any of the windows in his flat, and gleaming dark-wood wardrobes he could comfortably live in. Everything is sleek and obviously cost a lot more money than Andy’s seen in his life, and something more nebulous than hurt sinks in as he looks around, at the wealth on display, at the multiple tennis racquets stacked carelessly on the probably-designer chair in the corner, at the gleaming watches discarded beside a stack of brand new hardback books on the mahogany dresser.

If this is what being the third best tennis player in the world looks like, the only fault Andy can find is the ache in his own chest that feels like being hollowed out, cored; in the way his hands clench convulsively on nothing against the sheets. No wonder he’s been left. He’s probably the cheapest thing in the entire house.

His mood lifts slightly when he catches sight of the artless disaster of t-shirts and socks scattered over by the wardrobes, as if someone had tipped over the giant suitcase next to it while searching for clothes in a hurry in the dark - perhaps after a late night call from someone who needed rescuing. Looks like this is Novak’s room after all.

Which begs the question: where _is_ his knight in shining armour? (Christ, now even he’s doing it). Cautiously, because he still feels like someone introduced his head abruptly to a crowbar, Andy gets himself sitting upright by inches and pauses at ninety degrees, both to let his headache settle and to luxuriate in the give of the mattress, the down-heavy rustle of the duvet. He’s used to hotel beds, over-hard to support a production line of people, and his own cheap Argos boxspring with the Andy-shaped dip in the middle.

This on the other hand- this is like sleeping in the middle of something as soft as clouds look. Maybe Novak will let him live here, just in this bed, in exchange for sucking him off a few times a day. It’d be worth it.

It’s typical though that he’s thinking of blowjobs when there’s a quiet click as the door cracks open. Andy smiles, expecting Novak, thinking maybe a _thank you_ favour is in order if he can manage to see straight for long enough.

He feels the smile freeze stiffly in place an instant later when the man who peers in is a total stranger.

‘Ah,’ the man says, slipping inside and closing the door with a care that sets all Andy’s nerves on edge, ‘you wake. You feel okay?’

A handful of trite responses flicker through Andy’s mind without quite making it to his tongue. The man must register his frozen rabbit-in-headlights look because he holds up the steaming mug in his hand like a white flag.

‘Tea, I bring. You like tea? Last night we met but you were-’ The man waves his free hand in front of his round face that looks designed to be perpetually cheerful despite his current frown, ‘-not so awake yes? I am Novak’s coach, for all he listens not at all.’

‘Thank you,’ Andy manages, still awkward with repressed panic as the man- coach? God, he should’ve given in to temptation and just fucking Googled Novak so maybe he’d know right now if that’s the truth – puts the mug down on the bedside table, careful to avoid a pair of glasses. Andy swallows an inadvertent sigh of relief when he recognizes his own phone next to them, scratched but still in one piece, and the urge to hyperventilate eases enough for him to get out some words that aren’t entirely idiotic. ‘I- er, I guess you might know already then but I’m Andy.’

‘Marian,’ the round-faced man trades with his frown broadening into something more welcoming, although it’s still edged with disapproval. ‘You are Novak’s friend?’

There’s way too much backstory to that question so Andy chooses the path of deflection instead. ‘Um, I guess – where is Novak by the way?’

With a sigh, Marian rolls his eyes and picks up one of the pillows. Andy has a brief second of terror that he’s about to be smothered to death by an angry coach for harming Novak’s Wimbledon chances before Marian hurls it, overarm, pillow sailing neatly over the bed to land out of sight on the floor on the other side.

Except _not_ on the floor because the thump of pillow landing is followed by something spluttered that’d sound like an expletive in any language. A second later Novak’s head appears over the edge of the bed as he sits up, squinting blearily with a crease down the side of his face as if he’d been using his arm as a pillow.

‘ _Šta dođavola_?’ he demands before he blinks, focuses, and processes from frown to grin instantly.

‘Andy!’ he says with obvious affection that has Andy casting a sideways glance at Marian’s impassive disapproval, ‘you are awake! How is your head?’

‘Still attached,’ Andy says, because he isn’t going to admit it feels like his brain is full of sharp nails, and frowns at Novak. ‘Why were you on the floor?’

‘Nothing would do but he sleep near you,’ Marian says, pointedly ignoring the death glare Novak shoots him although he does relent enough to add, ‘Maybe concussion the doctor thought so you should be watched. But he ruin his back, no?’ He fixes Andy with a suspicious look, as if to imply deliberate sabotage despite Andy being ninety-nine percent unconscious throughout. ‘No more floor!’

Andy wonders if the implication that they should share the bed instead was unintentional. Marian doesn’t seem enamoured of him but then, coaches are basically paid parental figures so he shouldn’t expect Novak’s to be totally blasé at peeling concussed prostitutes off London streets at midnight, right before Wimbledon. He probably _didn’t_ mean they should be fucking like rabbits on the mattress instead.

But he also didn’t say they couldn’t. Andy’s not going to ask for clarification because he’s not a total idiot (and anyway, it's not as if he’ll _mind_ sharing the giant bed with Novak).

‘No more floor,’ he agrees. ‘Um, did you really call a doctor? I’m sorry about the hassle. Do- does he charge a lot?’

Not that he can pay it back. Maybe he could offer the guy a kidney to sell on the black market; he doesn’t drink enough to need more than one. The kind of doctor that answers midnight calls to check over prostitutes probably wouldn’t turn it down- although wait, does Serbia have a Mafia? Oh god, maybe it was a mob doctor who’ll take both his kidneys and anything else he fancies as a tip. He doesn’t know anything about Novak after all, so it’s not impossible that he’s got underhanded dealings with dangerous people. Surreptitiously Andy takes a deep breath, testing for any new surgical stitches hidden by the sheets pooling at his waist.

‘No, no!’ Novak says with enough haste that Andy wonders guiltily if his thoughts were that obvious, ‘he is my doctor! It’s fine, I call him often.’

Andy stares at him, toned and tanned and to all appearances, obnoxiously healthy. There’s a sudden thump of concern in his chest at the thought of Novak needing a doctor on retainer, at the thought of Novak being unexpectedly fragile.

‘Why do you call a doctor often? Are you sick?’

‘Yes,’ Marian cuts in before Novak even opens his mouth, ‘he is allergic at all things. Pollen. Practising. Common sense.’

Watching Novak’s face, Andy just catches the rebellious look that flickers across it. He’s startled to realise there must’ve been a genuine, furious argument between Novak losing his call and finding him on that street. It’s funny; he’d been thinking of Novak as this rich, successful tennis player who could go anywhere he wanted, do anything, and he’d forgotten that normal people, rich or not, had families and responsibilities and parental figures who’d disapprove of hookers.

He wonders what Novak told Marian to make him agree. How many lies, and what exactly Marian thinks happened to him that he ended up in that doorway, concussed and clinging onto Novak like a comfort blanket. Shit.

‘I was not going to leave him to freeze to death,’ Novak says, still mutinous. ‘Why are you here? Go and tell everyone I am still asleep.’

‘I will do that,’ Marian tosses back, ‘and they shall say, “stupid Marian, why did you not wake him? His practice time is in twenty minutes. We shall just go upstairs to get him.” And then all of them in your room you’ll have, introduced to Andy.’

Novak mutters something in Serbian, obviously rude from the bitter edge and from Marian snatching up another pillow to throw. Ducking it with impressive reflexes, Novak snaps more incomprehensible words without so much as a pause for breath and Marian snarls back and, caught in the middle, Andy wishes he could sink through the mattress and cease to exist.

‘I’ll just go,’ he offers tentatively. ‘If I’m in the way?’

‘ _No_ ,’ Novak and Marian snap as one. Hastily, Novak holds up a hand to cut off whatever Marian might say next and takes a deep breath, visibly reining in his annoyance.

‘It is not you, Andy,’ he says- lies, because it obviously _is_. ‘Also you maybe have concussion, you have to take it slow. Marian, tell them I shall be five minutes. _Please_ ,’ he adds emphatically. It even almost sounds sincere.

‘Five minutes,’ Marian warns. Turning to Andy, he manages something almost like a smile behind his strained effort at calm. ‘I apologise, it was nice to meet you, Andy. I am glad you seem okay.’

The ‘ _don’t be here when we get back’_ is left hanging, unsaid, but Andy’s heart sinks as he hears the clear echo, mumbling a polite acknowledgement.

He’s been so caught up in how complicated this is for him, he’d all but forgotten Kim’s warning about what this could mean for Novak. Marian obviously isn’t happy, and it sounds as if no one else in the house even knows about late night trips to London and concussed hookers in Novak’s bed...which, when he puts it into those terms, is an entirely sensible approach for Novak to take. He wouldn’t leave Andy hurt and lost in London, but he’s not going to ruin his life over it either.

Maybe the best thing Andy can do to repay the rescue is leaving silently while everyone’s out, creep back to his wardrobe-sized flat and pretend he was never here.

But the door’s barely shut behind Marian before Novak is on the bed, kneeling at arms-length as he stares at Andy intently. His white t-shirt is mostly a mess of creases but it has his name printed in giant letters across the hem which, frankly, Andy finds fucking disconcerting (the only other people he can think of who're important enough to wear their names are football players; it's a reminder of how vastly out of his league all of this is).

It seems rude to point that out however, when Novak is squinting at him with obvious concern.

‘Are you really okay? Sorry about-’ he waves at the door, either implying _Marian_ or _the rest of the house_ , Andy’s not sure. ‘I did not tell them about the other night and then when you call, I say we make friends but Marian, he is mostly annoyed I did not tell him the truth the first time you know? I did not mean to say good morning with all the yelling.’

‘That’s okay,’ Andy says and smiles, tentative because Novak’s still frowning at him and Andy wants to kiss him, wants it a _lot_ , but he has no idea what Novak wants. He’s a good enough hooker to anticipate what clients would like at least fifty percent of the time, but he’s not going to rush Novak again, not after how well that worked out last time.

Instead he lets his voice go hesitant with affection as he says, 'So, um. Good morning.’

In answer Novak’s frown lifts into his bright smile, as dangerously charming as Andy remembered it. ‘Good morning! How is your head really? The doctor, he say mild concussion perhaps but it looked-’ He swallows whatever he’s about to say, smile twisting down at the corners. ‘I was worried.’

Curious, Andy reaches up to touch the sharp ache on his forehead and encounters gauze and tape, catching softly on his scraped-raw fingertips. When he brings his hand back down to look he finds it’s clean, the blood he remembers drying tacky in the creases and smeared rust-dark when he rubbed at his face all washed away.

It should worry him that he can barely remember how he got from _disaster_ to _clean_ , but there’s the faintest sense-memory of soft, wet cloth and Novak murmuring _stay awake, Andy_ to him, so gentle over the scrapes that it barely stung. The sense of relief at knowing Novak had him, that he could let himself drift without having to hang on for just a little while.

‘Thank you.’ It slips free without permission, breathed out as he stares at his own accusingly clean hands. ‘You didn’t have to sort that you know. You didn’t even have to pick me up after what I did, when I’m obviously causing problems-’

‘No problems,’ Novak says firmly. Andy raises an eyebrow but lets the pointless argument slide. Novak clearly wants him to feel comfortable, which maybe means he really wants Andy to stay and Andy's not going to leave this thing between them on an argument before he lets Novak down by probably leaving. Again.

'Thanks anyway,' he mumbles, and before he can talk himself out of it he leans across the space between them to press his mouth, soft and questioning, to Novak's.

There’s a startled space of silence in which he thinks he might’ve got this right after all. Novak breathes out, shaky, into the warm brush of the kiss and his hand comes up to curl over Andy’s bare shoulder as if to move him closer, echoing the magnetic pull between them from that night on the Tube. Hope flickers to life as Andy hums the quiet sound he saves for nervous clients, soft encouragement as he shifts his weight, leans forward to push it into something deeper.

Until Novak’s grip on his shoulder tightens, pushing him gently back.

‘Andy,’ he whispers into the sudden inch of distance between them, Andy holding frozen-still, swoop of disappointment in his stomach as he waits for the inevitable refusal, ‘this is not why I found you.’

‘Oh. Oh okay.’ Andy swallows against a suddenly dry mouth. At least Novak’s letting him down kindly; it’s better than the yelling. ‘That’s fine, I just thought- I shouldn’t have assumed. Sorry.’

Starting to shuffle back, Novak’s grip on his shoulder pulls him up until the Serb hastily lets go.

‘Sorry!’ he says, hands going behind his back like a kid caught raiding the cookie jar, but Andy doesn’t bother to hide his confusion. Novak has nothing to apologise for; it’s Andy who read the situation all wrong. He just thought- if he leaves while Novak’s at practice, he’ll never see him again (who would want someone who runs away from them twice?) and he's tired of letting the universe beat the shit out of him without a word. He just wanted to _know_.

Well, he knows now.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he says, slow, holding carefully still because he doesn’t want Novak to read it as him flinching away from their shared warmth prickling all over his bare skin. He can feel the phantom graze of Novak’s morning stubble on his mouth as if they’re still kissing. ‘It’s just all I- I mean if it's not what you want, it’s okay.'

Frustration shadows Novak’s expression, furrowing into worry lines around his eyes. There’s circles of tiredness there too Andy notes, stab of guilt because he’s causing Novak nothing but trouble.

‘This is not about fault, or my wanting, Andy.’ Novak picks slowly over the words as if taking extra care in translation. ‘It should be about what we both want – what we can both have – and I am not sure we should rush in without talking. This is- is not simple, you know?’

‘It’s just sex,’ Andy says automatically without engaging his brain-to-mouth filter. Immediately wants to kick himself because he knows that’s crushingly stupid, an obvious untruth – if it was just sex, they’d be fucking right now.

Sure enough, a conflict of surprise and dismay clashes over Novak’s face but it’s cut through with a raw undertow of hurt that leaves Andy winded, furious at himself. He can’t seem to find the breath to speak in the bare second while Novak gets a handle on himself, too slow to stumble out an apology before the hurt smooths out to the blank mask of a smile, all show without substance.

‘Of course,’ Novak says, rigidly polite as he edges backwards. As a professional pretender Andy recognizes the act for what it is but his voice is still on vacation, rattling around the hollow of his chest. ‘It is not so easy for me with the rest of my team you understand, that is all I meant. Perhaps it is better not to start any such thing. Almost we got caught just once, would be pretty stupid for just sex, no?’

‘Right,’ Andy says, agreement lemon-bitter on his tongue. ‘Only, if you wanted- I’m happy to-’

Novak’s flinch is impressive, almost a fall when he forgets his hands are tucked behind his back and he has to flail out to catch himself, rolling off the bed in a graceless tumble of desperation. _Am I that bad_ , Andy wants to tease as Novak staggers upright but there’s still an aching weight in his throat where the right words should be – though, perhaps that’s for the best when he can’t even manage to lace simple sentiments together like _sorry_ , or _how can I make you change your mind, I meant to say that you're only the second person to really see me in four years and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop missing you if I leave._

‘Best not to, you know?’ Novak says, all veneered politeness that barely covers the crack in his voice. He’s flushed, shifting his weight in a tense shuffle of feet and staring at a patch of air over Andy’s shoulder as if he doesn’t want to make eye contact, shoulders drawn in unhappily. ‘I should go, Marian will be waiting. You should stay- I mean, if you do not want to that is fine, I don’t mean you _should_ \- I mean, if you have concussion, maybe walking is bad you know? I can get you a car service if you like, but you are very welcome to be here and borrow clothes and eat from the kitchen whatever you like, although it is mostly lettuce right now because Marian thinks green things win Grand Slams or he is trying to kill me with boredom, I cannot tell.'

He takes a ragged breath, biting his lip. ‘I just mean- it is all yours, if you want.’

It’s a quirk of language, nothing more, Andy knows that. Just Novak’s flawed attempt at painting over the cracks before they split to a chasm between them, trying so hard to hang on to his composure that’s going fragile at the edges as if he’s trying so hard not to be miserable and, now Andy’s thinking about it, there’d been an instant before the push where Novak kissed _back._

Startled, he remembers Kim saying _even you have to understand what that means_ and he thinks of Novak’s voice on the phone last night, the sharpness of his concern immediate and without a second thought of _he’s just a hooker_. The questions he’d asked back on the Tube, fingertips tracing Andy’s bruises.

There's a possibility – tenuous and unlikely as he knows it is, four years of experience balancing the hope with bleak pessimism – that Kim was right and his initial interpretation of Novak asking him to come home was wrong. That they had nothing to do with hiring and hookers and catch-free sex.

Implausible as it is, the thought almost drowning behind the bitter half of himself that wants to run, it is _just possible_ that this isn’t about the sex.

Just maybe, Novak might actually _like_ him.

Unfortunately he has no idea how to translate any of that into actual competent human words. It's too much to throw himself on that grenade without a safety net if Novak laughs in his face or worse, leaves in awkward silence.

But an uncomfortable addendum to the thought creeps in, insistent – because Novak rescued him with no reason, argued and upturned his life and gently cleaned all his bruises. If he can do all that, the least Andy can do is be brave enough to try to make himself understood. The worst that could happen is Novak rejects him for good – Andy's still a hooker, not exactly anyone's first choice.

But at least then he'll know. Better than spending the rest of his life thinking _what if._

He tries an awkward smile and watches hesitation shadow Novak’s face, tension written in the defensive curl of his shoulders.

'I don’t know about the lettuce,’ Andy says, voice gone flat with the weight of this, of getting it right, ‘I wouldn’t want to deprive you of that Grand Slam.’

Novak’s mouth shapes surprise, catching his lip between his teeth when he seems to realise he’s gaping like a fish. ‘No?’

‘No.’ Meeting his stare, Andy has to glance away after a second because he knows he’s blushing, too much to see Novak’s reaction when ploughing through what he’s about to say, words thick with effort. ‘I mean, Marian might have a problem if I make you lose at tennis and if –'

His breath snags on the sharp edges of what he's about to offer, wound tight in full expectation of a disaster but he’s committed now. ' _Hypothetically_ you know, if we did think about trying something complicated – if that was something we both wanted – I'd be interested. You know, in trying. That.’ He takes a breath before he suffocates from lack of air, or too much panic. ‘So I should probably stay on his good side.’

It drops like a rock into the quiet, Andy not able to force himself to look up to catch the reaction. Whatever it is, shock or wonder or dismay, they all have their own footnotes of difficulties and he’s already said more than he would have to anyone who hadn’t clearly gone to a great deal of trouble to rescue Andy from his own bad choices, opened himself up in ways that have nothing to do with sitting half-naked in Novak’s bed. Sticking with not-knowing for as long as possible means he can fool himself into thinking _maybe_.

His heartbeat thumps like a kick to the chest when Novak asks, quizzical and soft, ‘Hypothetically?’

Andy looks up. Novak’s staring at him wide-eyed, polite mask forgotten. There’s something curiously vulnerable behind his frown and he shifts his weight forward as if he might kneel on the bed again, canting towards Andy in a silent question.

A _bang_ on the door has them flinching back in unison, flash of guilt for all they were feet apart. Andy’s halfway to standing in flight-response before he realises there’s nowhere to go.

‘Novak?!’ Marian says loudly through the door. ‘It has been seven minutes! Shall I tell them Roger can have your practice time?’

The growl Novak gives in response is wordless in any language, pure frustration made sound. By the time Andy’s convinced his body that it doesn’t need the distracting wash of adrenaline, any common ground they might’ve reached is ceded and lost as Novak whirls away to rummage in the disaster of clothes by the upturned suitcase, t-shirts flung to either side with a little too much force.

Andy tries to distract himself with how nice Novak’s ass looks even in sweatpants when he bends over, lingering on formless thoughts of how stamina on the tennis court might translate into the bedroom to distract himself from the spreading flush of disappointment that Novak might reconsider, now, when they’d been almost _there_.

‘Whatever you are doing, is it more important than Wimbledon?’ Marian shouts through the door. With a faint flicker of humiliation, Andy realises the coach must know exactly what he is because the implication right there was that they’re wasting time _fucking_.

Novak clearly gets it too, and resents it, because without glancing round he hurls the shoe in his hand – an Adidas trainer that Andy would envy if it wasn’t a radioactive shade of orange – towards the door. It catches the edge of the dresser with a thud, sending the stack of books crashing to the floor.

Andy’s starting to suspect that spending quality time around Novak and his team may necessitate a flair for the (overly) dramatic and good ducking reflexes.

‘There is no winning Wimbledon if you break yourself falling off the bed!’ Marian shouts.

‘Maybe if I fire you, you can go annoy Roger instead?’ Novak yells back, whatever response Marian makes lost through the door. A second later he apparently finds the particular t-shirt he wants – they all look identical to Andy, who sorts his clothes by how long they've spent in the washing basket and whether the threadbare rips in them could pass as deliberate fashion choices – and yanks his sleep-creased shirt over his head,

Andy has bite his lip hard to hold back his involuntary sound of appreciation. Half-naked Novak is all muscled curves and mouth-watering tanned skin, beautiful all over. Obviously still filling out into his height but the dip of his spine into the dimple revealed by his sweatpants slipping down is already perfect, a taunt and a tease that has Andy blushing at his own hot spike of want. The men he fucks on a daily basis vary in size and shape and fitness across a vast spectrum of attractiveness and Andy’s learned to be indifferent, but compared to Novak they’re the lumpy practice efforts to a masterpiece.

_God_ , no wonder Novak seized the chance for a distraction instead of having to explain to Andy how wrong he was, avoided detailing in kind, awkward words how rescuing someone from their own bad choices doesn't equate to a marriage proposal. He could get to fuck anyone he wants, whenever he wants, just by taking his shirt off and waiting for the offers to roll in.

‘You can borrow clothes if you wish to shower, that is-’ Novak’s saying when Andy blinks himself out of distraction, cut off briefly when he pulls on the fresh t-shirt before finishing ‘-no problem,’ as he emerges from beneath the fabric, rumpled and flushed and Andy looks down before Novak can turn to see the bleakness written clear as a neon sign all over his face.

‘Okay,’ he says, carefully neutral.

‘I should not be more than an hour-’

Through the door, Marian yells, ‘ _MEDIA DAY,_ NOVAK _!_ ’ and Novak groans a genuinely pained sound, amends;

‘A few hours, depending on how much Marian insists I must talk to journalists but I will try not to be so long you are bored- I mean,’ he stumbles over the correction, ‘assuming you stay? I assume a lot, it is something I do and it is usually all trouble-making. Assuming Roger will find my impressions funny, that was very bad for me although they are quite excellent, ha ha much applause I get and now you are laughing at me also.’

‘No I’m not,’ Andy says, tucking his startled half-smile downward – because Novak’s _teasing_ , tentative confidence coming back; if Andy looks at him now he’ll lose an unexpected fight not to laugh. The sheer relief that they haven’t lost this is bright, but edged in bitterness for how easily it’ll slip through his fingers. ‘Go play your damn tennis before your coach breaks down the door to murder me.’

‘Marian would not murder you, he is pussycat underneath.’

Novak pitches his voice too loud, deliberate, and from the other side of the door comes a muttered stream of invective, accompanied by a sound remarkably like a tennis coach kicking the wall in frustration. Novak laughs, a bright, sparkling sound and it corrals the welling sadness in Andy’s chest.

If nothing else he’s had this, had Novak smiling at him like sharing a secret, wistfulness colouring his tone when he adds;

‘I must go though. I would like to win Wimbledon very much.’

Andy’s breath hitches on something he might’ve said to that, once. Thankfully Novak doesn’t seem to notice; he goes to retrieve his shoe instead, murmuring an affectionate insult to it as if it chose to cause destruction all by itself and by the time he’s done with his laces, moving on to rifle through the mess on the dresser with an impatient noise, Andy’s pushed the ancient tsunami of misery far down enough that he can look up again, breathe.

‘I think you’ll win Wimbledon,’ he offers. He can feel his smile is crooked, partly from the searing ache of old wounds – and partly because Novak’s clean t-shirt isn’t any less creased than his old one, blue clashing with his orange trainers and all his hair flattened to a mohawk on one side and somehow, despite resembling a refugee from clown school, still looking like everything Andy might want in the world.

When Novak’s answering broad grin tips him from _attractive_ to _fuck fantasy_ , Andy has to dig his nails into his palms to reassure himself he’s actually here, that the concussed thump of his headache isn’t causing him to hallucinate (he hopes).

‘It would help me to win Wimbledon if I could find my glasses,’ Novak admits, gesturing at the clutter on the dresser with a hopeless air. ‘Seeing the ball is an important part of practice.’

‘Good coaching advice there,’ Andy agrees and thinks of Marian giving him the tea. ‘Wait, I saw-’ Twisting, he leans back to the bedside table to retrieve the thin frames he’d spotted earlier, turns to hand them over.

Only to come immediately face-to-face with Novak, balanced with one knee on the edge of the mattress and leaning, canted towards Andy with his hand outstretched.

For the glasses Andy knows, but it would take a bare twitch of thought to turn it into touch, for Andy to lock their fingers together and reel Novak in. For a flicker of a second the same realization crosses Novak’s face as indecision, crinkling into a frown.

Andy puts the glasses into his hand. His heart is racing fit to break against his ribs but he tried, and he’s failed, and he’s long past making a scene over things he can’t have.

‘Marian’s waiting’ he says, quiet, watching the shift of colours in Novak’s eyes from the rippling sunlight and memorizing the way he looks this close. The shadow of morning stubble ages him a little, combines with the tan to give him the slightly rakish air of a pirate or a highwayman, exotic and perhaps not entirely trustworthy; the suggestion of lines from too many smiles softens it, has affection aching in Andy’s chest. He’s always had a secret fondness for dimples.

‘Andy,’ Novak murmurs. Just that and it’s enough. Not a question, just a simple affirmation as he meets Andy’s eyes, searching his face for something – Andy doesn’t know what he’s being measured for but this might be all he has of Novak ever again so he holds still, waiting.

Words shape on Novak’s lips and die soundless, discarded as inadequate before he visibly braces himself.

‘When you say,’ he starts, uncertainty rippling like the dappled sunlight over his face, ‘something _complicated_ …’

_Oh._ Andy’s stomach backflips, forgetting how to breathe as hope lights up like flash paper, only to evaporate just as fast into ashes because Novak didn’t- he was so _sure_ Novak doesn’t want this, tumbling down from the crest of hope too fast to climb back, battered from all the times he’d let himself want too much before. Already planning his quiet exit from the house after Novak left to make it easy on them both, sure it was the only way.

Just as he’d been sure he couldn’t stay last time, and look how that worked out for everyone.

Staying still, keeping his voice calm to the point of monotone, he says, ‘Yeah?'

‘It would be- difficult,’ Novak says, almost as if he’s trying to talk himself out of it. His eyes are shadowed with doubt but they flicker down to Andy’s mouth and back up, a betrayingly helpless tell. ‘You are here and I am not so often, and many secrets we would have to keep from people, yours and mine that you don’t even know. Always disaster right there.’

He pauses and Andy wants to nod, wants to offer the lifeline of _it could be worth it_ , wants to say he could be willing to try something new at last but this is Novak’s decision. Andy has no right to push him into anything so he waits, frozen, poised on the knife-edge of hope and disappointment and breathless anticipation.

‘ _Hypothetically_ ,’ Novak says and his half-smile crinkles the laugh lines around his eyes, already well-worn and familiar, ‘if I said I would like to discuss more…if I said I think difficult could be worth it and have things you should perhaps know before you decide, would you still be here when I come back?’

Heart beating hard enough that he’s sure Marian outside the door must be able to hear it, Andy swallows until his dry mouth can form sound.

‘Yeah,’ he says, rasp of effort caught in his throat, ‘yeah I think I might.’

The grin that dawns on Novak’s face is wonder distilled, a vivid beautiful thing and Andy almost sways forward to kiss the intoxicating shape of it before he pulls himself up short; it’s not that easy, only agreed to discuss after all.

But the movement betrays him, mutes the curve of Novak’s smile to something softer, more assured and, shifting across the bed, he brings a hand up to curl at the back of Andy’s neck, glasses still clenched between his fingers. The coolness of plastic and metal is a shock, and Andy would say _be careful_ because he’s sure those things are expensive, only the words are buried in Novak’s mouth meeting his.

There’s no hesitation this time. Both of them lean into the kiss, Andy opening easily, Novak’s tongue sliding warm and wet into his mouth and the choked sound that vibrates between them could originate from either of them, the sound of relief, of _finally_. Novak’s all heat and smooth, touchable skin against Andy’s mouth, familiar and new together, all new lean lines to memorise. There’s a sharp scrape of stubble beneath Andy’s palm when he curves a hand over Novak’s cheek, up into the softness of hair so much tamer than his own and Novak’s hum of pleasure when Andy threads his fingers through it is sincere, sharp and pooling an aching warmth in Andy as body-memory shivers all over, remembering the last time they did this in earnest. Novak’s hair is too short to get a grip, to hang on, but Andy lets the knowledge take root that he doesn’t have to: Novak’s not going anywhere.

Somewhere just beyond the bubble of solitude where Novak kissing him is the only thing that exists, someone pointedly clears their throat.

‘I am sure this is charming as lambs frisking in springtime,’ Marian says over Novak’s startled gasp, both of them flinching back although Novak’s hand stays, sure and steady, curled around Andy’s shoulders, ‘but we are really very late.’

‘Marian-’ Novak starts sharp with irritation but when he glances over, his sudden splutter of laughter is enough to have Andy looking too. Standing in the doorway, Marian could be glaring at them – probably is – but it’s impossible to tell because he has his hand clamped firmly over his eyes.

‘It is okay, we are- how do you say?’ Novak asks, twisting back to Andy with the amusement curling through his tone, mouth so red and puffy and beautiful from the kiss that Andy’s briefly distracted, has to blink himself back to the question.

‘Decent?’ he offers after a second’s thought.

‘Decent, yes. Marian you can look.’

‘No time to look,’ Marian says, although he does drop his hand and relief flickers over his face when he realises at least Novak’s fully dressed. ‘We are late and there is a car waiting. You can canoodle later.’

‘ _Canoodle_?’ Andy repeats before he can stop himself, half-impressed by the quirk of translation, half-horrified that Marian felt the need to use it, and Novak bursts into laughter again as he presses a last, chaste kiss to the corner of Andy’s mouth, clumsy with delight.

‘Later?’ he murmurs into it, too quiet for Marian to hear, and Andy hums an affirmative.

It’s not until he’s watched them leave, Novak casting one wistful look back over the shoulder bowing with the weight of his tennis bag, that he realises with that one word he’s just committed himself to spending at least an entire day in Novak’s shiny, expensive rented house – in the middle of Wimbledon.

With a vague sense of impending disaster, he stares around the flat-sized bedroom and hopes Novak was joking about the lettuce. He certainly can’t go trotting down the road to Starbucks.

Not that he has any money if he did. He’s going to have to ask Novak for his Tube fare home even and something about that thought feels appallingly humiliating enough that he forces himself out of the bed to banish it with action. Make himself presentable for Novak first, panic later; prostitution makes for excellent compartmentalisation skills and right now, one step at a time sounds like a reasonable plan.

First he plugs his battered phone in with a charger he finds among the landslide of books by the dresser, grateful that Novak has the same brand of phone even if they’re separated by several hundred pounds and about a decade of upgrades. The screen is scratched and chipped from London’s pavements, but he hopes with desperate optimism that it might still work anyway. When it’s charged he’s going to have to call Kim before she notices the missed calls from last night and has the entire Met police service hunting him down.

Then, after tentatively opening the bedroom’s too-many doors to: a walk-in closet full of ladies’ shoes probably belonging to the owner of the house (based on so-far evidence, he’s reasonably sure that Novak doesn’t secretly call himself Natalie at weekends); an adjoining door into the next bedroom (almost as big as the master and he wonders how large this ridiculous house _is_ ); finally he finds the ensuite, space-age dark grey tiles and gleaming chrome made slightly more welcoming by the strew of brightly-coloured tennis towels Novak must’ve ‘borrowed’ from tournaments. He spends much too long playing with the _Star Trek_ -esque dials in the shower, ostensibly because the warm steam eases his headache but secretly because he can’t quite believe any shower exists that has glass walls he can barely brush against outstretched fingertips, that has seven different settings labelled like cryptic crossword clues: _1.condensation, 2. cloudburst.._ . He wonders if the top one percent really wake up in the mornings thinking _I fancy a monsoon before my lunch date today._

The elbow-bruising-tiny shower in his own flat has two and a half settings: _off_ , _trickle_ and, every Sunday afternoon when Mrs Morrison downstairs is bathing Elrond, her yappy Jack Russell, _drip_ . The only bathroom-related thought he ever has when he wakes up is, _I hope my fucking shower works this morning._

He’s showered in five star hotels before of course, on the odd occasion he gets the sort of client who can both afford the hotel and is willing to let the hired help clean up before they leave, but there’s something intimate about a personal bathroom, even a rented one. He uses Novak’s soap, mint-sharp, squinting to read the bottle before he realises it’s not in English, and wonders if Novak jerks off in here or in bed, if he prefers the locked door or the thrill of possibly getting caught. Maybe Marian was afraid of walking in for a reason.

But, Andy thinks as he remembers Novak’s shyness on the Tube, that he slept on the floor to give Andy his own space, probably not. For all his bright smiles, he’s building a perplexing suspicion that Novak isn’t all that confident in himself at all.

Andy just can't work out _why._

Finally drying himself off with a US Open towel, he ignores the tiny flicker of misery as he smooths his palms over the soft blue and white terrycloth and pads back into the bedroom, vaguely wondering if he should put the sweatpants back on –they felt new, thick and shedding bright fluff as if they’re just off the hanger – or look for something clean, what Novak meant by _borrow clothes_ . He can’t exactly hang around with the tiny towel around his hips all day, although, it’d be one method of persuading Novak in their, ah, _discussion_ later.

So caught up in worrying about what to do because he doesn’t want to reward Novak’s kindness by wearing his favourite t-shirt, not when he’s already stolen a hoodie, it takes him several seconds to register that the annoying shrill sound he’s been tuning out is his phone ringing.

_Kim_ , he thinks with a rush of guilt and jogs to catch it before the call cuts to voicemail. He almost loses the towel as he fumbles up the phone with a breathless, ‘Hi, sorry-’

‘I should think so,’ Annalise says in a crisply disapproving tone. ‘Why haven’t you been answering? I’ve had security looking everywhere for you.’

Sinking down on the edge of the bed Andy finds himself clenching his free hand to a fist in the towel, white-knuckled. It takes a moment before he can trust his own voice not to crack, abruptly furious.

‘Really?’ he says. ‘That’s funny because when I was wandering around London with a head injury, none of you seemed interested in picking up. Again.’

‘Head injury?’ That startles his boss into losing her detached professionalism for a minute; her careful accent goes roughly Londonish at the edges. ‘Are you in hospital? I’ll send Marcus to take you home.’

She means Marcus on security, the ex-wrestler who likes to loom too close to Andy whenever they meet, seven-foot height almost as oppressive as his perpetual body odour of Lynx and greasy takeout from the Big Mac wrappers crammed in his pockets. Once, he’d told Andy that the only thing he was any good for was to be used as a toothpick.

‘I don’t need Marcus,’ Andy says tightly. ‘I’m staying with a friend.’

Annalise’s tone disbelieves him utterly when she says, ‘Really?’ The momentary cracks have vanished and she’s back in control of herself, all veneered concern. ‘As long as you’re sure, sweetheart. No lasting damage I hope? The client had quite the ruffled feathers when he called this morning.’

_Oh, so you pick up for the customers_ , Andy thinks sourly before he processes that last and has to bite his tongue on a curse, phone case creaking as his hand clenches around it.

‘He waited until this morning to call?!’ he asks, hearing it twist too flat, bitter. ‘And didn’t happen to mention I cracked my head open on the way out? How good Samaritan of him. I bet he didn’t mention that he spiked my drink either.’

‘ _Andy!_ ’

Fury cracks Annalise’s front to pieces, cutting like razor-wire and he hates himself for the automatic urge to flinch, catching sight of himself in the mirror on the back of the door hunched inward like a child caught misbehaving. Wants to stand up for himself but Annalise runs right over his half-hearted start, voice sharp enough to cut.

‘You should know better,’ she snaps, ice-sharp with disdain. ‘We don’t spread rumours about the clients and frankly, you’ve already run from the gentleman once. He offers you a drink to smooth the situation over and you overreact like this. It’s _not acceptable_ and you’ll never mention that again, do you understand?’

So angry he’s shaking with it, Andy remembers his panic last night, the impossibly unlikely chance of Novak that was the only thing that saved him and dares to say, ‘But-’

‘ _Enough._ ’ Annalise cuts him off. Over the pounding of his heartbeat and the dizzy wash of anger, Andy hears the murmur of voices in the background over the line, something muffled as Annalise replies before she comes back on. ‘Andy, I’ve taken a lot on sufferance from you over the years but you’re hardly my star asset. I can and will stop vetting your bookings so carefully if it ceases to be worth my time.’ She pauses deliberately. ‘Am I _understood_?’

It sounds like nothing but, as threats go, Andy’s been around long enough to know the weight of this one. It’s been explained by the other hookers over the years, by clients who understood the system and found his naivety hilarious.

‘Every professional sex agency in London shares their blacklists,’ one smirking businessman told Andy in his second year, ‘keeps track of those clients who hit a little too hard, pay in fake notes, who’ve proved that they can’t be trusted not break the merchandise, even if it is illegal. You sweetheart, don’t need to worry about me or anyone who calls you up for a quick fuck if they’re through your agency. If you go flaunting your fine ass on street corners on the other hand, be ready to get it spanked you know?’

Andy hadn’t known but that, and what he’s picked up since, has made it clear that when anyone calls to make a booking Annalise and her staff check names, addresses, credit cards, to clear first-time clients against the list before any of the hookers get a call. It’s what Andy pays them their cut for partly, why he considers himself marginally safer than if he was standing on a street corner to let anyone in a passing car pick him up. The agency does their best not to send him anywhere he’ll get permanently scarred, or hurt, or murdered, partly because some of them aren’t entirely terrible people, and partly because a dead hooker would bring them awkward questions.

In implying she might be less than thorough in her checks, Annalise means that the next time someone off the blacklist calls, she’ll give them Andy. Hell, she might set it up herself; he’s under no illusions about her sentimentality where he’s concerned, rated so far down the list of hookers on the agency website that he’s barely visible.

When he finds it, his voice comes out flat, misery thickening his accent as he mutters, ‘Understood.’

‘There's my good boy,’ Annalise says briskly. ‘Now I really do think Marcus should come to fetch you. Surely you’d be more comfortable recovering at home – where are you?’

Staring at his hand where it’s clenched in the towel Andy can see it trembling, the white _U_ of _US Open_ squeezed between his fingers. He’ll take every blacklist client she wants to throw at him rather than tell her he’s in Novak Djokovic’s house in Wimbledon; god only knows what she’d do with that gem of information. It’s worth the trade.

‘Really I’m fine,’ he says and hears her take a breath to argue so he adds, quickly, ‘he’s had a doctor out and I have concussion so I’ll need to have someone around for a few days. I’ll be okay here.’

Annalise doesn’t manage a lucrative, illegal sex trade agency on stupidity. Just as Andy knew it would the mention of a doctor pulls her up short, suddenly elevating his ‘friend’ in her mind from ‘fabrication’ to ‘threat’ – anyone who can call out a doctor overnight is likely to be connected, or rich, or both. Andy isn’t worth the possibility of offending someone actually important.

Definitely not someone who might be tempted into paying for expensive bookings in future.

She’s back to cool professionalism in the space of a breath as she says, ‘Well as long as _he’s_ looking after you sweetheart, we’ll give it a few days yes?’ False affection barely covers the sour note beneath; Andy’s next booking might be off the blacklist anyway and she’ll cut her losses. ‘I’ll call again Monday okay? See if you can squeeze another few clients in next week before your rent’s due.’

Getting that dig in. Of course she knows his rent day’s Thursday and he’s short. He’s pretty sure his thug of a landlord is a front and she owns his flat anyway.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I’ll see how I feel.’

Annalise’s tone cracks to sharpness, just for a breath. ‘You do that. And I’ll see you Wednesday to settle up this month’s account, _sweetheart_.’

Before he can steal the last word from that half-threat, she hangs up.

Letting the phone drop to the bed where it instantly disappears into sheets rumpled from his and Novak’s kiss that feels like a lifetime ago, Andy stares at his shocked-white reflection in the mirror hanging on the door. It’s framed in worked silver that looks like something from a Sotheby’s auction catalogue and as a distraction technique he runs through the memory of the time a client took him to a sale there once, dressed him in a borrowed suit and showed off by spending a few million on art (that Andy privately decided looked like a child’s finger painting) before ostentatiously bribing a security guard to ‘borrow’ a storeroom for fifteen minutes.

Andy’s pretty sure the antique ottoman he came all over was worth more than a few decades of his services. Kim laughed so hard she’d spilled their shared bowl of popcorn when he’d related the story to her, curled together last winter under the brightly-printed handmade throw that lives on her sofa, imagining a billionaire somewhere furnishing their mansion with Andy’s come-stained priceless antiques.

It’s a good memory, one of the handful, (too few). It’s still not enough to stop the tear that escapes, sliding down the reflection’s cheek before Andy scrubs it angrily away.

‘What?’ he asks himself out loud, forcing a humourless smile at the mirror. ‘You thought you’d get to keep this? Did you think you’d be what, his pet, and that’d be enough?’

His reflection stares back at him without an answer. The square of gauze on his forehead stands out in clean white that contrasts his pallor, the flush of red left over his cheek from the angry rub of his hand, and the tangled thatch of his hair gone frizzy from the shower. He looks unhappy and overly thin, like something that should be flashed up on a television charity appeal.

Anyone would say he looks like more trouble than he’s worth.

‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he tells the mirrored Andy, sharply bitter, ‘you’re nothing special remember?’

He’s- he’s also talking to himself while mostly-naked in an almost-stranger’s bedroom, despite the fact that he’s just bought himself a weekend of freedom – okay so it’s possibly-concussed, house-arrest freedom and Novak’s going to realise pretty quick that _complicated_ actually equals _not worth it_ but fuck it. He’s got a whole weekend before he has to worry about his job and if Novak does well at Wimbledon, they could have two weeks to hook up before he moves on to the next tournament.

_Grow a spine, Murray_ he tells himself and, pushing down a sick feeling at the nagging thoughts of rent and next clients, he forces himself up onto legs that feel matchstick-fragile as he limps across the scattered clothes. Novak’s going to be home in a few hours and Andy is going to be dressed, smiling, and not for a second reward Novak’s effort to rescue him by showing him there’s anything wrong.

Which is great, best intentions and all, but if Kim calls Andy knows it’ll take just a panicked ‘Why do I have seven missed calls, are you okay?!’ and his bravado will crack like an egg, already feeling on the edge of too-fragile and miserable with his headache pushing hot behind his eyes.

Given a flicker of sympathy, there’s a better-than-fair chance he’ll end up sobbing pathetically to Kim down the phone. He wouldn’t put it past her then to rat out the entire clusterfuck of his life to Novak and like the Moriarty she is, guilt-trip him into offering to help – which will lead to Andy never speaking to her or Novak again and then he’ll properly be up shit creek without a boat when the next blacklist client Jack-the-Rippers him in a seedy hotel room.

So, after choosing a washed-thin blue t-shirt from the bottom of the pile on the floor, he retrieves his phone from the relief-map of sheets and taps out a quick text:

‘ _Hey kim sorry if you have missed calls, phone went down sofa. guess i was one of those assholes buttdialling you! :) hope art is going well, talk Mon. A xx’_

Three hundred and sixty-two days of the year she’d be on him like a hawk on a mouse for that weak-ass alibi but he’s banking on her deadline tunnel-vision. For the next two days, all she’ll be processing on a higher level is ink and colour wheels and the occasional prayer to her deity of choice, Banksy; it might buy him enough time to sort his life out.

How he’ll do that is still... under review but he’s already been handed one miracle rescue in the last twenty-four hours and the taste of Novak’s mouth on his lingers, the body-memory of his warm hands ghosting over Andy’s skin.

Maybe by the time Kim works out that he’s lying, he’ll know what the truth actually is to tell her.

 

*

 

Andy first met Kim because, as with so many other things in his life, he wrongly assumed that he knew what he was doing.

_Jo_ , said the text from Annalise, followed by the time, the name of a bar and an _x_ in the standard client-location-any-special-requests format of messages about bookings. The bar wasn't one Andy knew, a Knightsbridge postcode and a handful of reviews remarking on the menu prices when he Googled it for directions, but the _x_ meant no complications, a straight up fuck-and-go and he hadn't hesitated before texting back a _y_ to accept. He'd been selling himself for long enough to be almost over the sick sensation in his stomach every time he knelt, bracing himself for the cane or the paddle or to open his mouth, but the simple ones were still a relief. Easy money even and he almost sauntered along to the bar, fifteen minutes early as standard and wearing the tight jeans he'd bought in Topman when he was feeling flush the first month. One of the other agency hookers told him they made his arse look deceptively attractive (before adding, grinning, that at least it distracted from his face) and he was feeling almost cocky as he slipped through the heavy glass doors into a blast of air-conditioning.

For an awkward second, he thought he'd got the wrong place. It was high-ceilinged and open-plan, glossy black tables and discreet leather booths artfully scattered around a 360 bar that circled a mirrored pillar in the middle of the room. Soft music was filtering out from hidden speakers, tinkling and classy, but the place was empty; the only movement was the TV screen set in one wall showing the news, and the shadows of passers-by across the tall windows.

Heart suddenly hammering in humiliation, Andy took a slow step backward toward the door. He'd duck out and double-check his directions in the Starbucks across the street, watch out the window if this was the right place until the client arrived, or no-showed. There wasn't a flood of people through the doors so he'd be easy to pick out, although Andy couldn't work out why any client would pick somewhere so echoingly empty to hook up.

It was common to arrange meet clients in bars and public places before heading on to hotel rooms, because prostitutes (as Andy had already discovered, to his crushing embarrassment) were unerringly spotted by any concierge worth their pay and firmly redirected back outside the hotel unless they had an escort. But usually the public place was, well- public, full of busy, loud people to disguise meeting up with someone to fuck. Anyone meeting him in that empty bar would stand out as if carrying a glaring neon sign.

His back hit the glass door but before he could turn to push out, there was a metallic clink of a spoon against a cup from somewhere on the other side of the bar. Like- someone stirring coffee and Andy hesitated.

Maybe the guy chose the place because he knew there’d be no one around to see and he’d deliberately sat out of sight, assuming Andy would know to walk the room to find him? Worth a shot, and Andy swallowed his awkwardness as he walked across to circle the bar, trying to rediscover his confidence that had seemingly shriveled the instant he met the empty room.

When he rounded the bar, it died completely because the only person there was a girl.

_Woman!_ his panicked thought process corrected instantly, as if the cautious, inquiring look she gave him might be able to read his mind. She was early twenties perhaps, hair tumbled in a soft fall of golden-brown against the dark knit of her oversize jumper, ludicrous for the bright July day outside but sensible in the air-con making Andy shiver. There was a coffee sitting on the bar besides a hardback book, colours splashed across the glossy pages beneath the finger she was using to keep her place while she raised an eyebrow at Andy expectantly.

Oh. _Oh!_ Jo without an _e_ – short for _Joanne_ or _Josie_ or any number of girl’s names and Andy hadn’t even thought, not a single woman booked for him since he signed on with Annalise but he _had_ nodded to the ‘All’ option when she’d checked his preferences during their first meeting. He preferred men but liked women too, kissed a one or two in high school when the (rare) chance came up and enjoyed it all the same. It shouldn’t be a problem.

Still- ‘I think you’re expecting me?’ he said, hesitantly. _Never assume_ , Annalise’s voice rang in his head, the list of rules and suggestions she’d dropped him in a quick and dirty orientation months ago; assuming was the fastest way to get arrested.

‘Ye-es?’ the woman said, sounding not entirely certain but Andy let his panic go on a quick, relieved breath. Clients, especially first time, sounded uncertain all the time and he tried to relax his shoulders as he walked over, act reassuringly sure of himself as he slid onto the slick, uncomfortable barstool next to her and pasted on a smile.

‘Sorry, I know I’m early. Thought I had the wrong place for a minute. Are there rooms upstairs or do you have a hotel in mind?’

She went still, eyes widening at him and in an instant Andy knew, with a sick, sinking feeling, that he’d assumed wrong.

‘Ex _cuse_ me?’ she asked, voice an octave too loud.

Nothing else to do – backpedal. Pretending a blush wasn’t sweeping over his face Andy leapt up too-fast and awkward, almost tangling his feet in the stool legs and his suddenly-sweaty hands slipping across the polished bar when he tried to balance.

‘Sorry, thought you were- someone I er, knew! Wrong place after all, I’ll- I’ll leave you to your coffee, sorry-’

‘ _Wait_.’ It rapped out sharp and years of listening to his mother snap out that exact tone (even when it took on a frustrated edge, threaded with disappointment, he’d never weaned himself off obedience) had him freezing automatically in place.

Blondie narrowed her eyes as she gave him a once-over, contemplative but she wasn’t reaching for a phone or into her purse for pepper spray so Andy chose the path of least resistance and stayed rooted to the spot. His thoughts were tumbling over on a spin-cycle of panic, running through excuses and coming up blank; he was supposed to lead in carefully, double-check names but he’d been so sure of himself. Been so fucking stupid because if he ran now, she could call the police with his description and every bar in the area would be off-limits to him for months.

‘From the look on your face that says you’re wondering how to make the emergency exit, I’m guessing you’re not the new sous-chef.’ Blondie’s tone made it a statement rather than a question. Knowing he was still blushing to the roots of his hair, Andy mutely shook his head and Blondie made a thoughtful sound. ‘Good, because I’d hate to have to get him fired for hitting on me before he’s made a single canape. Next question: were you actually hitting on me – very ineptly I might say, if that’s the case – or did you have a reason to think I’d say yes to going with you to a hotel room?’

Andy’s panicked swallow gave him away, even before his voice creaked as he said, ‘No reason, no. Do- do you work here?’

‘Yes,’ Blondie said and her eyebrows went up as she caught his face falling, the miserable flinch because now every bar in the area would _definitely_ be on the lookout for him. ‘Okay, final question for the grand prize and keep in mind you’ve already insulted me by assumption so you owe me an honest answer – do you really think an art student who waitresses at a bar, even one this stuck-up in Knightsbridge, would be able to afford a rent boy?’

That- was not the question Andy was expecting but he shook his head anyway, staring down at the floor in resignation. When a man’s voice spoke unexpectedly behind him, he couldn’t stop his flinch.

‘Hey Kim, is this guy bothering you?’

Andy waited for Blondie – Kim – to say _yes, throw him out_ or possibly, _yes, call the cops._ Not expecting anything else, even when the silence dragged out and the anticipation was flooding his blush a darker, humiliated red until he couldn’t stand it any more and looked up to glare-

To find her smiling at him, quirked and amused. Slowly, with careful movements as if she expected him to startle away, she straightened up from her slouch and closed her book.

‘It’s fine,’ she reassured the guy over Andy’s shoulder, a terrifying shaved-head-and-rotund-with-muscle bouncer when Andy risked a glance back and wished he hadn’t, ‘This is-’ Briefly she hesitated, her eyes flicking to Andy’s hair, ‘- Rusty. He’s a friend, we were just catching up.’

‘We were?’ Andy asked when the bouncer retreated back to whatever dark corner he lurked in when he didn’t have hookers to throw out. Panic was still shaking through him, trembling in his hand where he gripped the bar but Kim was still smiling, kindness edged in a sardonic amusement at the situation that he was trying not to find reassuring. Trying to ignore the tentative optimism that was suggesting maybe she wasn’t going to hand him in so he could make a break for the door while the bouncer was out of reach but before he could convince his feet to move, Kim slid her untouched cappuccino toward him and leaned back.

‘I can’t afford much,’ she said, ‘but you look like you can’t either. Tell me how anyone with hair that ridiculous and an accent that lovely ends up as a half-starved hooker in London and I’ll trade you all the free coffee and bar snacks you want.’

Andy hadn’t had a coffee since he got to London; he’d told himself he didn’t like it anyway, but avoiding by choice and forced by necessity were, he’d found, very different things. His voice felt dry as sandpaper as he said, not reaching out, ‘It’s not that interesting a story.’

‘Neither is this Art History essay.’ Kim shrugged and grinned at him. It lit up her entire face, quirked slightly wicked and against his will – his better judgment – Andy could feel himself being charmed. ‘C’mon, you wouldn’t abandon a girl to struggle through a boring book would you? Spill.’

It took another second. But then, slow and feigning reluctance in every movement, Andy sat down and reached for the cappuccino.

‘I’ll have to leave when the client gets here,’ he said and Kim shrugged again.

‘Then I guess we have a few minutes to work out if this can be a beautiful friendship.’

 

*

 

Finding the kitchen in Novak’s ridiculous rented house turns out to be a mini-quest in itself.

Padding down the plush-carpeted hallway Andy passes countless more antiques like the door mirror, enough of them breakable that he keeps his arms clamped firmly against his sides; with every step, he has to talk himself out of retreating to the bedroom. The stairs are a sweeping march of gleaming white rails and silver-grey carpet, curving down to a wide foyer dazzling with sunlight that pools in the white-panelled walls, the pale parquet floor that feels slickly-polished, cool beneath his bare toes. Hesitating at the foot of the stairs, he glances around at the doors leading off in every direction and wishes he could stop feeling like a burglar.

‘ _Zdravo_?’

The voice comes from one side; Andy, expecting that he’d been left alone in the house, lets out a startled curse, trips backwards, and sits down hard on the bottom step.

‘ _Oprositite!_ Sorry!’ There’s a blur of movement that doesn’t help his dizziness from the abrupt drop and then a teenager of all things is helping him up, thin, tanned hand warm in Andy’s and dark eyes bright with concern.

‘Not hurt?’ he asks, gripping on to Andy’s fingers as if afraid he’ll fall again.

‘I’m fine,’ Andy assures him, wobbling a little before he comes to an agreement with his balance. Taking his first good look at his assailant he realises the kid’s disconcertingly familiar. Much smaller, a few less worry lines, but the resemblance is clear enough for him to venture a guess: ‘You’re Novak’s brother?’

‘You are Novak’s friend!’ the kid says instead of confirming it, although his wide smile – Novak’s smile – is answer enough. Although it’s another incidence of _friend_ , Andy wondering again just how honest Novak’s been about who the strange man hiding in his room might be.

Andy’s not about to demand a definition. For one thing, the slowness to the kid’s English suggests it’d be an excruciating effort just to find a common understanding of ‘prostitute’. For another, he’s not about to traumatize Novak’s little brother. The kid looks about twelve; should he even be home without a responsible adult? Jesus, what if-

‘Is there anyone else here?’ he asks, careful to keep his accent as smooth as possible.

Novak’s brother frowns with concentration anyway and yeah, Andy’s going to leave the sex worker discussion to someone who speaks the same first language. Hell, Andy’s barely competent in English.

‘Only us,’ the kid says after a minute, watching Andy’s face intently and Andy smiles, nods to let him know he’d understood right. ‘Novak ask me…’ Apparently that exhausts his English because he drops into mime, pointing to his eyes, at Andy, and then shrugging with an easy, helpless charm that’s instantly familiar. Andy wonders if he’s picked it up from Novak or if it’s a Djokovic thing, as genetic as the set of their eyebrows and an ability to sucker Andy in to smiling helplessly back.

‘He asked you to watch me?’ he translates and the kid nods with enthusiasm.

‘Bang?’ he explains, points at his forehead and Andy blinks, bewildered because he’s not exactly expecting to get shot in the middle of Wimbledon village so what-

‘Oh right!’ he agrees, ‘Concussion?’ and that’s probably a word too far because the kid frowns, but Andy breathes out a tension he hadn’t even registered until it was gone. Novak hadn’t left a nursemaid to make sure he didn’t rob the place, or abscond without a goodbye. No doubt he’d deliberately picked the least-threatening option and counted on the family charm to persuade Andy to stay.

Rough gig for the kid though – elder brothers being bastards; Andy can sympathise – and Andy’s careful to keep his smile non-threateningly polite as he offers his hand again, to shake this time. ‘I’m Andy.’

The kid’s grin widens impossibly. ‘Djordje,’ he announces, shaking Andy’s hand with the solemn concentration of any kid being treated like an adult. Andy tries to keep his wince hidden because he knows before he even tries that name’s going to come out of his mouth mangled.

He thinks he’s made his dismay too obvious for a second because Djordje gives him an assessing look, verging on suspicious. Andy waits with dread for the imminent interrogation: _how do you know Novak, why are you here, how do you hurt your head,_ nothing he’s comfortable answering until Novak’s back and that’ll be _hours._

Whatever Djordje was considering, Andy must measure up. His grin resurfaces, careless and happy, simply pleased that Andy’s there, and he asks:

‘Do you play PlayStation?’

 

 

Spending a day recovering from possible concussion by sprawling in a plush media room and letting an overenthusiastic teenager teach him the intricacies of Fifa 2008, on a screen that takes up _an entire fucking wall_ , probably wouldn’t be the official medical advice.

But either Andy's head's harder than anticipated, or the startling ease with which Djordje makes him laugh is worth more than any doctor’s orders. He can feel himself relaxing almost against his will, tightness unwinding down his spine as he stabs controller buttons and Djordje gestures encouragement that implies it’ll respond better if he waves it flamboyantly around, until Andy has to pause the game to give him a glare that keeps breaking up in a grin. It’s surprisingly easy to dismiss the problems waiting for him come Monday when he’s laughing, having to mime two words in every three and learning Serbian curse words by context.

The last video games he played were on the secondhand Nintendo he left behind in Scotland so he’s appallingly bad at everything they try but Djordje seems to take his utter failure as a challenge, childishly invasive with touch as he guides Andy’s hands on the controls and humming sympathy when he loses, again. They don’t share enough language for interrogations but Andy gets the impression from the determined cheerfulness, the care that he takes in comforting Andy at each _Game Over_ , that Djordje wouldn’t ask anyway.

Maybe Novak warned him not to pry, but Andy’s not entirely sure that’d explain Djordje’s obvious delight in him being here, the anxious note in his voice when he asks, ‘Okay?’ every time he makes a suggestion.

Maybe, Andy thinks, he can ask Novak later. In the meantime he’s just grateful to have nothing more demanding than video games, something he gets to start over for every mistake.

By the time, hours later, that he glances away to rest his aching eyes and finds Novak leaning against the doorframe with a smile, the misery of the morning has ebbed to an ache he can almost ignore.

‘Hello,’ he says, suddenly aware of his loose-limbed slouch over the leather sofa that probably cost more than the entire contents of his flat, dropping his feet hastily from the antique coffee table to the floor. ‘We were just- Djordje’s been keeping me entertained.’

‘I see that,’ Novak says. There’s something soft at the edges of his smile as he looks at Andy – unreasonably so, because Andy knows his wet hair has dried into a dandelion-puff of curls and he’s still tired, enough that he must be pale, hollow-eyed. Novak in contrast is in tennis whites now, gleaming beneath a new red hoodie that brings warmth to his tanned cheeks as if he’s been selected by the interior decorator of this ridiculous house as an artwork, harmonious lines and colour. He’s all easy, long-limbed grace as he pushes away from the door to cross the room toward them.

‘However,’ he says, ‘I must steal you away if he can part with you.’

From beside Andy on the couch, Djordje sighs something in Serbian. It makes Novak laugh, leaning over to ruffle his brother’s hair – over Djordje’s flailing protest – before he translates for Andy.

‘Djordje says he wishes you would stay more often. Apparently you are almost as easy to beat on PlayStation as I am.’

‘I don’t see how anyone could be worse,’ Andy says ruefully and Novak laughs again as he rounds the couch, stopping beside him and it must be Andy’s imagination (they’re not _that_ close) but it’s as if he can feel the warmth of Novak prickling over his skin, bringing a flush to his face. Out the corner of his eye he can see Djordje giving them a bright, birdlike stare of curiosity.

When Novak offers a hand, Andy blinks at it stupidly before he coordinates himself enough to take it, allows himself be pulled to his feet. Novak’s palm is warm, even more than the heat in Andy’s cheeks, and pleasantly-rough with calluses and even when Andy’s standing, he doesn’t let go.

‘Some time I will show you. Now-’ Glancing at the open pizza box on the table, lurking in a scatter of water bottles and Coke cans, he asks somewhat redundantly, ‘Have you eaten, yes?’

‘Yeah- Djordje asked me to order, said it was okay. Is- is it? He answered the door, no one saw me-’

Novak squeezes his hand reassuringly. ‘Andy, it is fine. I was going to say order if you had not. Although I wish you had ordered me one also,’ he teases and reaches for the last slice of pizza, abandoned in the box when Djordje declared himself too full and Andy didn’t want to be rude enough to stuff his face, even though he can’t remember the last time he allowed himself the delicious, greasy luxury of takeout.

Before Novak can grab the pizza, without looking away from the giant TV Djordje smacks his hand away. He hisses something in Serbian that has Andy flinching, taken aback by the sudden brotherly hostility, but the answering yell he expects from Novak doesn’t come. Instead he sighs and tugs Andy towards the door without so much as a mutter in retaliation.

‘What?’ Andy asks, twisting back to give Djordje a bewildered look. Novak’s brother just grins at him and gives him a little wave, cheerful as he loads up a new game – certainly not eating the pizza he’d fought for. ‘What was that?’

He blinks as they step out into the dazzling-white hall, squinting against the glare to focus on Novak’s morose expression. The only sound is the bright, electronic music spilling out from the media room and the rest of the house sits still and quiet around them, orange-tinged sunlight slanting through from the other rooms and windows. It must be later than Andy thought.

‘That was Marian brainwashing Djordje to his side,’ Novak explains incomprehensibly, leading Andy to the stairs. Andy’s confusion must be obvious when he glances back because he elaborates, ‘I read a book about diet and sports, a few months back now, and make mistake of telling my team of – what is the word? Annoying people who think they know best?’

‘Er. Busybodies?’

‘Mmmm.’ Novak seems to mull over the shape of it. ‘ _Bus_ ybodies, yes. Now Marian and my new fitness trainer, they think I feel tired on court because I eat too much sauce, too much salt, and are masterminding a conspiracy to make me eat like a rabbit.’

Andy thinks of his own kitchen, the sad rationed Mars Bar and the empty shelves. When Djordje showed him to the kitchen here, his glimpse inside the gleaming American-style fridge took in bottles of sports drink stacked by colour, packs of salmon, fresh fruit spilling from the drawers. Looking for the Coke cans, Djordje had carelessly pushed aside a bottle of Bollinger champagne.

‘How terrible for you,’ he says, deadpan, and has a second of kneejerk panic when he remembers that he’s in Novak’s house on sufferance, that sarcasm isn’t good manners, before Novak tosses a sparkling grin over his shoulder.

‘That is what Marian says.’

‘Does it work?’ Andy asks after a moment, watching the muscled line of Novak’s back, the very pleasant view of his tanned thighs as they climb the stairs. Novak looks great, seems fit, but it’s dawning on Andy that he has no idea how well the Serb’s playing right now; he’s avoided all news of tennis since he got to London – longer - and being third in the world doesn’t necessarily mean Novak’s not injured or going through a slump. Andy doesn’t want to trip over his tongue and upset Novak when he’s struggling. ‘I mean, the eating lettuce – if it helps you win, don’t you think it’s worth it?’

‘I think I would sometimes like a piece of fucking pizza,’ Novak says sadly and tugs him through the bedroom door, leans back to close it behind them before turning to stare at Andy.

_Oh_ , Andy thinks with a shiver creeping down his spine. Of course they agreed to talk but Novak’s been gone for hours. Maybe he’s had long enough to remember what Andy is and that he’s good for only one thing because the look pinned on him right now is definitely speculative.

If he’s weighing up whether to break it to Andy that this isn’t going to work before or after they fuck, he shouldn’t worry; it's not as if Andy’s going to say _no-_

‘How are you?’ Novak asks, kind and so entirely unexpected that Andy nearly says _it’s okay, I understand_ on autopilot for rejection before he registers the actual question. The genuine concern in it and he can only gape for a second, words sticking in his dry mouth.

‘I’m fine,’ he says lamely. Novak’s skeptical eyebrow-lift disbelieves him so he forces a shrug. ‘Really. My headache’s almost gone and Djordje’s great. It’s been-’ Surprise at the truth of his own words has him stumbling over them, almost shy suddenly. ‘It’s been a good day.’

The tense hunch of Novak’s shoulders eases down a fraction, smile lopsided and tentative – almost shy.

‘This is good,’ he says and carries on in a tight rush, words stumbling over each other. ‘So…how do you feel about staying? It is fine if you would rather not- Marian pointed out to me that you may feel, you know, obligated to be here only because I want you to be and that was not my intention to force you to house arrest, but we have not told the others you are here so if you wish to go I can call a car service now while Marian distracts them at Wimbledon. If you would like.’

‘I-’ Andy swallows against sudden doubt.

But- Novak _wants_ him here, he's almost sure, and that’s reason enough to force the words out. ‘If you want – I’d like to stay. I have the weekend free, I’m all yours- I mean,’ he amends hastily when Novak goes wide-eyed, ‘to talk or whatever? If you still want to.’

From the way Novak lights up into a grin, Andy guesses that was the right answer. ‘I would love you to stay and talk! Here,’ and he catches Andy’s hand up again, tugging him across the room. Andy assumes they’re going to tumble onto the bed and he’s halfway to wondering if he’ll suck Novak off before they talk or have to wait until after, only for Novak to stride past the siren call of the tangled sheets, all the way to the floor-to-ceiling glass in one wall. Pushing aside gauzy pale drapes, he smiles hesitantly over his shoulder as he slides open the French doors.

‘I like to sit here in the evenings, to read,’ he explains. His inviting gesture takes a scatter of cushions, dumped in a careless heap that would have the house’s interior decorator sobbing into their blueprints, drifted up against a delicate juliet balcony overlooking the landscaped garden. The roofs of Wimbledon village are visible in patchwork through the trees and the sun is sinking toward them, thin streamers of clouds turning pink in a sky washed clean by yesterday’s rain.

Andy will be the first to admit he’s about as far from romantic as it’s possible to get without actually turning into a lump of granite, always has been. He puts it down to stoic Scottish genetics reinforced by life lessons.

But in an irritating habit he’s never been able to break – in lieu of photographs he can’t afford, the client notes he's too afraid to keep because yeah, that'd be a nice neat list of _illegal activity_ for the Vice Squad – he collects memories with a restless focus he can never quite shut off. His mind seizes on details and reruns them when he can’t sleep; what that client tasted like front and back, what that one sounded like when Andy did _that_ with his tongue, how the flare-bright slap of the paddle stings less when he times his flinch right – the disaster of his life annotated by touch and taste and the soft, broken sounds he knows how to make when the men finally let him come.

He’s never thought of himself as smart but memory is just a trick of attention and patterns, and the desperate, aching determination to get better at the one thing he has left to be good at. To _fail less._

Now he realises, in a flicker of mortification, that this is one of those things he’ll rerun on a loop on the nights he’s on his own shitty mattress. Back in his flat and listening to the leaky roof drip into the bath, the hum of endless traffic outside, he’ll close his eyes and remember Novak gilded in sunlight, unaware of Andy imprinting on the moment and the invitation to enjoy everything Novak has – _is_ \- without conditions.

He has to take a breath, to steady himself against the sudden pressure behind his eyes that absolutely isn’t an urge to cry because he refuses to be that much of a sap. For fuckssake, he needs to stop forgetting that he won’t get anything out of this beyond a weekend of free takeout and a comfortable bed, before he utterly humiliates himself. Just because Novak wants him here for now isn’t any kind of commitment and any flights of optimism can be put down to leftover delusion from the concussion, or a sign that he’s been listening to Kim wax nonsense about romance for too long.

Dragging his stare away, he tugs his hand free to drop down onto the cushions and deliberately doesn’t look to see if Novak’s smile falters. Glances down at the garden instead, the weedless gravel and flowers in military-neat beds, the American-style barbeque that’s bigger than Andy’s entire kitchen, effortless wealth on show.

But his eyes slide inexorably back to Novak, trying to look sideways and surreptitious. Any other client, he would’ve suspected they brought him over to the window to show off but Novak doesn’t so much as glance at the expensive landscaping as he curls himself up opposite, gaze instead resting on Andy as he shrugs off his hoodie.

It’s that which makes Andy realise the evening air drifting in is warm, edged in the golden-edged grassy smell of summer at last. If he’d been wandering the streets tonight, he’d have been fine. Timing; his is impeccably awful, as always.

‘So last night,’ Novak says tentatively, snapping Andy’s attention back to the room in suspicious act of mindreading. He shuffles to get the hoodie behind his head as a makeshift pillow, foot brushing against Andy's ankle as if by accident. ‘Do- do you want to talk about it?’

Not particularly, Andy thinks.

‘Talk about what?’ he says, dismissive. ‘Nothing happened, I didn’t finish the drink when I realised it was spiked and I left. If I hadn’t got lost, I’d most likely be waking up at home with a headache about now.’

It doesn’t sound like anything drastic to him – it’s true, after all – but Novak stares at him as if he’d said something appalling.

‘He spike your drink and let you leave? I know you say last night this was so but I thought- would he not have called anyone to say you were hurt?’ Faint panic crosses his expression. ‘Does anyone know you are okay?’

‘He called the agency this morning,’ Andy says, swallowing against the fresh ache of misery before he can add _only to complain that I’m shit at my job._ ‘He didn’t have to tell anyone – illegal business and all, and as he spiked my drink to start with he was probably hoping I’d trip and drown myself in the Thames.’ Then, because Novak’s progressed from _appalled_ to a grim frown that promises further questions and possibly hunting down the client in a misguided attempt at revenge – that’ll almost certainly lead to Novak getting snapped in half by the agency’s security – Andy adds hastily, ‘It’s fine, I’m fine! Kim knows, my boss knows and thinks it was all my fault anyway. No one’s going to come looking for me here or think you kidnapped me or anything. We can just forget it.’

Novak’s quiet for so long that Andy starts reviewing what he’s said, alarmed he’s given enough away for Novak to actually go find the guy and start yelling about irresponsible treatment of prostitutes until he gets, inevitably, punched in the face.

Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up the agency, fuck. Novak’s geographically-challenged sure, but he’s smart enough to use the internet and someone determined enough could track down Andy’s profile without too much trouble. Looking sideways through his lashes, assessing the damage, he sees the stubborn set of Novak’s expression and his stomach backflips.

‘Novak,’ he says, quietly desperate. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not-’

‘There is no one else?’ Novak asks abruptly. ‘Just Kim and your boss?’ The corners of his mouth curl down as he says _boss_ , and Andy starts a mental list of ways to keep Novak from doing anything stupid: steal his phone again; enlist Marian in cutting off all escape routes; hold him down and suck his dick until he comes hard enough to develop amnesia, _anything_.

Distracted, his answer comes out overly sharp. ‘What, a best friend and a workplace aren’t enough? Not all of us have teams we pay to follow us around the world you know.’

Instantly he regrets going on the attack because Novak’s eyes go wide and the slack line of his mouth transcribes genuine hurt, too fast to mask. ‘Sorry,’ Andy says quickly, hand coming up to hover uselessly between them in an aborted reach, as if he can snatch the words back or smooth the misery from Novak’s face. ‘Novak that wasn’t-’

_What I meant_ he’s about to say, only that’d be a lie and he amends it to, ‘fair.’

‘No,’ Novak says, sharp himself and the silence sits uncomfortably for a minute. Andy curls miserably back against the balcony railings, pressing his shoulder into sun-warmed metal and feeling like a shitty human being until Novak gusts out an unexpected sigh.

‘You are not wrong,’ he admits. The words are clipped precise, the small, careful voice of someone balanced on an emotional tightrope and Andy swallows against his welling guilt. ‘I should not judge – most who would miss me are- are my team. Djordje not, Marko my other brother who is back home this week, but my parents, we have not been speaking so well lately and it is hard, being surrounded by other players who always see competition, always look for weakness.’ He glances away, out at the trees and the last of the sunlight falls over his shallow smile, shadowing the crinkles at his eyes into harsh lines as he gives Andy an uncomfortable smile that falls well short of convincing. ‘Is hard to make friends when you are breaking each others’ dreams to pieces every week, no?'

There’s a bitterness to the admission that suggests it’s not something he’s reconciled to, for all the smile to make it a joke. For what must be the hundreth time since he ran from the Tube Andy takes a startled moment to reevaluate.

He’s assumed a lot in the last few days, Novak’s perfect life of wealth and success – but he thinks afresh of all the puzzle pieces he’s been pushing together crooked and by guesswork, reshuffles them to fit the admission that Novak likes to read by the balcony _alone_. That he’d been wandering London by himself – dared by Djordje rather than a laughing group of friends – and Djordje’s anxious attentiveness to Andy as if he’s not used to Novak’s friends, as if it’s unusual for Novak to have friends in the house at all – Marian’s wary hostility reframing itself from dislike of Andy’s job, of the distraction before Wimbledon, to caution for what might happen if the stray Novak picked up from the street turns around and bites him.

And underneath the damning pattern is an undertow of dark, sinking realisation that, if not for a few chance moments that morning where they fumbled towards an understanding, Andy would’ve sneaked out and left without ever seeing Novak again. Assuming Novak would shrug it off, go back to his supposedly-fantastic life as if it was no big deal. _Fuck_.

Even by his standards he's misreading Novak terribly, as if he's a book written in a language Andy doesn't quite speak, or if all his usual criteria are askew. He's been booked by plenty of rich, successful men before; the sense of unfamiliar ground this time is disconcerting. At least he'd actually avoided accidentally acted like an unforgivable asshole to Novak _again_ this time-

Which is when he realises the silence is dragging on. Hastily he runs through a handful of potential sympathetic things to murmur, trying to find one that doesn’t sound like the cliché bulllshit he'd throw out for clients but he keeps circling back to the blunt question he can't voice because it's rude, it's unprofessional, he shouldn't ask-

'Why?!' he blurts out, wincing immediately because he should've learned by now that opening his mouth is inevitably a disaster but everything about this, about the unhappy twist of Novak's expression, is _baffling_ . 'I mean, maybe I’m biased because you saved me from dying of exposure yesterday but why the hell wouldn’t anyone like you? You’re funny and charming, even when you’re hopelessly lost, and you’ve not even tried to take advantage of having a hooker in your bedroom which I can tell you, with the voice of experience, is pretty unusual. I know tennis players can be arseholes but I didn’t realise they were bloody _stupid,_ which they are if they can’t see that you’re great.’

Throughout the mini-speech that Andy didn’t intend to make – this is why he doesn’t _open his fucking mo_ _uth –_ Novak’s frown softened through confusion, to a blush, to an openly affectionate grin. By the time Andy stutters to a halt, the tension that hung between them before has vanished beneath Andy’s flushed cheeks and the warm press of Novak’s socked foot into the curve of his knee, relaxing out into Andy’s space.

When he breaks the silence, it’s in a half-wondering tone. ‘How do you know tennis players can be assholes?’

Wearing the heat of a now-vivid blush, Andy silently curses his unerring ability to say exactly the wrong thing. ‘I- what? Oh. Um, well Kim, we talk about it sometimes. She gives me all the gossip from her dad – he coaches on the ladies’ tour and he thinks Kim should get more involved.’

‘This I know,’ Novak agrees, grin flickering to rueful. ‘You know I have met her yes? Once before when we were introduced at a player’s party which you could say did not go so well and again when she return your phone yesterday morning. Both times she threaten me, it was very how you say? Very intimidating.’

‘Wait, what?’ Andy frowns. ‘Why did she threaten you yesterday? I just asked her to give your phone back.’

When Novak smiles at him it’s so frankly affectionate, blinding, that Andy has to blink, drop his gaze to focus uncomfortably on the Adidas logo on his pristine white t-shirt.

‘She likes you very much, I think,’ Novak says, soft. ‘I would not have hung up when you called anyway but she threaten many terrible things if I was cruel to you. She may be small but I believe her when she say I regret it if I do not behave well. How do you know her?’ He hesitates suddenly, swallowing. ‘She is not – I mean no judgment when I say your job, did you-’

‘No! No, god no!’ Wincing, Andy makes a mental note to never, ever let Kim hear about this conversation – occasional coworkers and flatmates have made that same insinuation before and barely lived to regret it; he’s sure she won’t let Novak off the hook, regardless of what sort of maybe-sleeping-together-hypothetically-complicaed arrangement he’s in with Andy at the time. ‘She’s not a client. I er, just thought she was.’

He hesitates but Novak’s raised his eyebrows encouragingly, at least pretending to be convincingly interested, so Andy haltingly recounts meeting Kim, the bar and the disaster that turned out okay in the end. Through his lashes, he occasionally glances up at Novak to see how he’s taking it and meets a gaze bright with amusement, intent on every word and Andy can’t help his awkward smile, flushed with warmth all over at Novak’s attention and that he’s relaxed, the awkward tension between them vanished.

‘Anyway,’ he concludes, ‘the next day the agency called me and demanded to know why I’d no-showed the appointment. I told them the guy wasn’t in the bar and they said he insisted he was. Apparently he’d come to the door and the only other people in there were the bartender and, quote, “a couple on a date”.’

Novak bursts into laughter, head thrown back. ‘I bet Kim _love_ that,’ he says when he’s caught his breath, grin achingly wide. ‘And that is how you are friends, you make wrong assumption? Obviously she like you enough to forgive you for mistake.’

‘Yeah, she told me that the least I could do in return for thinking she’d have to pay to get sex was hang out with her until she worked out how a feckless Scottish boy ended up as a London hooker. ’ Andy catches himself as the brightness in Novak’s expression goes sharp, focused on the question, and scrambles for a distraction before he drops himself into uncomfortable territory. ‘So how did a blond, five-foot-something Arts student intimidate you when you first met her? Did she threaten to paint you naked?'

Novak’s eyebrows hike, diverted. ‘Has she painted yo-’

‘ _No_ , _’_ Andy says hastily. Novak’s grin disbelieves him so he adds, a reluctant mumble, ‘when she asked, I told her my going rate for taking my clothes off and she said, ‘no one’s dick is worth the price of that many shoes’. And stop avoiding the question.’

The look Novak briefly flashes him for that is speculative, pinned on the words _going rate_ and Andy’s heart skips a painful thump.

But instead of the expected interrogation – framed at times tentative or greedy depending on the asker, but always excruciating just the same – quiet falls, Novak’s smile flickering to uncertainty and settling into the polite mask Andy suspects is designed for and practised on rooms full of journalists. He glances away to the military precision of the garden, the glow of the setting sun through the balcony casting striped shadows across his face and failing to camouflage the muted unhappiness lurking beneath.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Andy says softly, because he may be terrible at his job but he’s still spent four years making people feel good to earn his rent money and he reads them better than he used to. ‘It’s none of my business, yeah?’

Novak glances at him, all tiger-striped sunshine and golden in the dying sunset, briefly distant and for a second Andy thinks he’ll take the out.

Then the corner of his mouth pulls up and he’s familiar again, affection spilling helplessly over the edges of his faked composure as he leans back against the wall, shoulders relaxing down from the tension.

‘No,’ he says, ‘I think it is. Is what friends do, no? Discuss other friends? I am not used to explaining is all – always journalists ask the intrusive questions and I have to bite my tongue, it becomes habit.’

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ Andy shrugs, trying to make it more reassuring than the standard-grade flatness of his accent usually allows. ‘Confidentiality comes with the illegal job and all that. And I’ve probably heard it before anyway so I’m pretty hard to shock. You can tell me even if, I don’t know, Kim caught you hogtied and suspended in a bondage club.’

Novak blinks. ‘Do I want to ask wha-?’

‘No!’ Andy winces; _stop talking,_ he orders himself. Of all the fucking things to mention. ‘Just- accept that was one of my more interesting bookings and forget I said that yeah?'

‘Right.’ Despite an uncertain dip to his tone, Novak's smart enough not to push or maybe he’d rather not know Andy’s hooker horror stories. ‘Well. It was not as much as all that. She only throw her champagne in my face, so maybe it could be worse you know?’

This time it’s Andy’s turn to blink. ‘Wait, back up. Kim – the same Kim, blond, sarcastic, more likely to smile sweetly and plot your untimely death behind your back Kim – threw a _drink_ over you?’

‘In all fairness,’ Novak admits, ‘I deserve it.’

Andy sighs. ‘You hit on her, didn’t you.’

‘That is, I believe it is called, slander and a terrible assumption you make when you hardly know me and,’ Novak continues, unable to keep a straight face for his own guilt-trip and Andy rolls his eyes at the ridiculousness even as he struggles not to smile, ‘and it is possible that it is slightly, perhaps entirely, the truth.’

‘I am shocked,’ Andy says dryly and Novak kicks his ankle, socked toes too soft to hurt.

‘Did you not also hit on her?’

‘That was an _accident._ ’

‘Excuses, excuses,’ Novak dismisses with a flick of his hand but there’s an effort to it, straining white-lined at the edges of his smile. Before he’s quite processed the rush of concern Andy’s reaching out, brushing his fingertips over Novak’s foot which is the only bit of him close enough to count as not crowding his space.

'Hey,' he says, dropping awkward into the sudden quiet that hangs between them, 'honestly, it's okay. Whatever it is, I won't tell.'

Novak looks at him for a long moment, eyes wide and thoughtful.

'No,' he murmurs, almost to himself, 'you do not discuss clients.'

'Or you, either,' Andy says without thinking and Novak's startled look is untelegraphed – the surprise completely honest. The part of his lips on something half-formed, the lush curve of his mouth, draws Andy’s attention and with an ache that’s not quite hunger he thinks of them kissing easy and enthusiastic on the Tube, the complicated tentativeness of the repeat that morning.

They still haven’t touched on the elephant in the room that is what either of them want; Andy isn’t even sure if they’re going to fuck tonight.

More surprising is, he’s not sure it matters.

‘So you non-accidentally-on-purpose flirted with Kim and it went badly enough that she decided you needed to wear some probably-overpriced champagne,’ he prompts, and Novak frowns.

‘Hm? Ah, yes well it was not so much that I flirted badly. More that I had not realised she had been watching me earlier and the friend I was with, I am-’ He stumbles, a bare hitch of breath. ‘I was, ah, fond of. Not that they knew so much, and I was more drunk than advisable so I flirt rather too much – too much for anyone who watch. ’

Andy hums an understanding sound, neutral because he knows exactly what Novak’s describing, of course he does, what that particular brand of misery looks like – feels like, like knives through the chest with the effort of every smile. He’s used to being the substitute after all; it comes with the territory, hookers inevitably the willing accomplices in emotional infidelity. Usually it’s something he knows by intuition and guesswork, from the wrong name gasped mid-fuck, the fumble of hands used to longer hair or shorter legs, betrayed by body memory. The same story repeated always with half the pieces missing.

But last November, a regular client asked to meet him in a tiny new bar. Andy’d seen it reviewed in the _Metro_ tagged with words like _discreet_ and _discerning_ , knew it was tucked into a buzzing corner of Shoreditch where no one would bat an eyelid at an obvious hook-up. Nothing particularly unusual in it, and he’d agreed without a thought, dressed to the client’s usual specifications; worn-soft old jeans and no eyeliner, white shirt, broadcloth so fine it hung almost transparent across his chest and earned him more than one appreciative glance as he slipped through the crowds. Early by a handful of minutes he’d hesitated in the humid press of bodies by the reclaimed-oak bar, debating if it was worth ordering a drink when he saw the client with a group of other men across the room.

Obviously all friends – pints and shared laughter, loud and flush with alcohol as they stood around a high table over near the tall windows facing the rain-blurred rush of traffic and London at night, lit up all shining white and stardust-glitter in the Christmas illuminations. With a sigh, Andy had leaned back against the slick polish of the bar, waiting to catch the guy’s eye.

Instead, in a moment when the rest of the party glanced up at the nearest TV screen with the football results spilling out in endless subtitles, his client leaned over to the guy beside him. The conspiratorial curve of his shoulders promised familiarity and permissions to each others’ space; his free hand brushed over the other man’s forearm, over the bright white shirt crisp and thin. The name he murmured was the careful shape of affection, followed by something obviously teasing from the fond crinkle of his smile, mouth almost touching the other man’s rusty-brown thatch of curls.

The man in the white shirt didn’t even glance away from the TV. Said something absent over his shoulder – dismissive, a _yeah of course_ – and Andy watched the man he knew inside and out in bed draw back with a careful shrug that was entirely new, all the open emotion shuttered away behind the fixed smile.

Later, after the client spotted him and made his excuses, met Andy at the door and led the way to the usual hotel, the usual rough sweetness and care not to break the skin when he scraped a frustrated bite along Andy’s collarbone, the harder-than-usual way he held Andy’s wrists pinned and pushed in until Andy cried out in earnest – after that, he shook as he came and for the first time Andy knew exactly whose name was silenced into his gasp, lost against the kiss-sore warmth of his mouth.

Exactly who he wasn’t, and he wondered, then and every time since, if he’d been meant to see, and if having something half-finished and insubstantial was better than cutting loose to get over it. If he’d ever be brave enough to ask.

He hasn’t yet but, looking at the white-lipped grimace Novak tries to mask, he thinks he can guess pretty well anyway.

‘Kim, she is- well, you know.’ Novak frowns out at the Wimbledon skyline, now fading from the soft gold into the pink-hued hush of dusk. ‘Honest on what she think.’

‘Brutally,’ Andy agrees and the echo of a smile flickers over Novak’s face.

‘She had been watching, I think,’ he continues, ‘before she had to be introduced and in the end we are at the bar together. It is crowded, many players and the staff take their time so when they ask me first I lean over, offer to buy her a drink, and she say no thank you, I would not want your friend to be upset.’

Andy can picture it; he’s seen Kim with drunk customers countless times at the bar, unruffled and viciously, dismissively casual about their advances. Two months ago a particularly persistent guy reached across the bar to tuck a scrap of paper scrawled with his phone number into her shirt pocket. Before Andy, sitting a few seats along, could take issue with his handiness, Kim had pulled the paper out, rolled it up with an overly-flirtatious smile, and slam-dunked it into his pint.

He's not seen Novak drunk but the easy affection the Serb offers even sober suggests he’ll be the relaxed type, overly-tactile and buoyed up on the confidence of alcohol enough to trip face-first into Kim’s sarcastic put-downs. Not all that different from the number-guy maybe but Andy feels a rush of sympathy for past-Novak when the Novak in front of him, here, sitting within touching distance with his toes tucked warm into the hollow of Andy’s knee, folds his arms defensively over his chest like he's bracing for the hurt before he continues:

‘Of course I just say to her, what friend? And when she point I laugh, dismiss it as ridiculous but she shake her head, say she won’t tell but she know how it feel to want someone you can’t have, what it looks like, and I am drunk, I panic that she noticed something I keep hidden – not excuses you know, because I am also very stupid and I say-’

Pausing to swallow, Novak drops his gaze to stare at the floor. ‘I say, whoever he is I promise you forget all about him when you are screaming my name.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Andy says, exclamation breaking loose before he can catch it. Never mind getting a face full of champagne; he’s surprised Novak didn’t get castrated by a well-placed stiletto.

He doesn’t say, _you deserved it,_ because there’s enough light left to read the shame in the downturn of Novak’s mouth and Andy knows how confessions work. Rubbing salt into open wounds right after is an arsehole thing to do.

Still- ‘You were wrong you know,’ he says after a minute, and when Novak glances at him, uncertainty in the deep lines of his frown, Andy meets it with a rueful grin. 'That was better than my meeting-Kim story.’

It’s a poor joke but there’s a barely audible sigh as Novak breathes out, a slow release of misery as he straightens from his defensive hunch.

'I was- not always so nice when I was younger,’ he admits, ‘but I have regret this time, not only for the champagne. I find her number from her dad the next day, send an apology but I not see her again until I open my door yesterday and she is standing there with my phone.

Andy grimaces – in attempting to avoid making Novak uncomfortable (and okay, skip the crushing humiliation for himself) looks like he might’ve caused inadvertent emotional trauma anyway.

'Ah, sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d want to see me after my Houdini act and Kim said she knew you, so I thought- Sorry. I hope it wasn’t too awkward.’

Novak shrugs. ‘It is fine. Marian only interrogate me for an hour on if I sleep with her and if he need to look at a restraining order.' Andy flushes, about to mumble something profusely apologetic when Novak flashes him a smile, sideways and wickedly dimpled.

Teasing. The _bastard._

Andy throws a cushion at him.

‘Shut up,’ he says, rough-edged in affection and when Novak’s laugh spills over it’s brighter than the last threads of sunset, head leaned back against the wall with a look slanted at Andy, the fading light catching gold-leafed on the fondness to his smile, the sharp, beautiful angles of him all fit and lean and like nothing Andy ever believed he’d get to touch.

Too tempting to resist and, obeying years of honed instinct, Andy shifts, moves across the scattered cushions on his knees until he catches himself with a hand on the balcony railing a handspan apart. Novak's watching him with the amusement shaded down to something shifting, wary and hopeful at once.

‘This morning,’ Andy starts awkwardly and hesitates, tongue tangled in knots and heartbeat hammering panic-fast in his chest. In contrast Novak’s so still, he might be holding his breath. ‘Hypothetically...if I kissed you right now, would that be okay?’

Novak tilts his head slightly, lower lip caught between his teeth – not rejecting, just considering and his eyes flick tantalisingly down to Andy’s mouth. There’s a second where he takes a breath to speak, and Andy thinks _finally,_ the relief sinking like a splash of something white-hot in his stomach and-

And from downstairs there’s the sound of a door slamming, admitting a muffled burst of voices too indistinct to make out but disruptive in the silence. Too much so, Novak breaking his focus on Andy to glance warily at the door and the fragile thing between them vanishes. _Fuck._

From downstairs, Djordje’s recognisable shout briefly rises above the blending buzz of other voices and falls, the noise dropping back to a background hum of other people in the house. Novak’s team getting home, Andy surmises, cursing them for their sense of timing (or lack of).

The wry edge to Novak’s tone when he speaks suggests he’s doing the same. 'Not hypothetically, I am sorry, you are likely stuck here now until morning unless you wish to sneak out when all are asleep.’

‘Wasn’t planning on leaving, so it’s fine,’ Andy says around the sinking feeling creeping over him. He starts to lean back because he guesses that’s his answer – _stuck here_ – and he's sure the disappointment is too sharp to mask, this close, clear on his face as he pulls away.

He's barely moved an inch when Novak’s hands settle on his hips, holding him light and tentative.

_Asking,_ in a touch, and Andy's heart stutters.

'It mean, however,’ Novak says so softly that Andy holds his own breath to hear, ‘we would have to be quiet. Hypothetically, if my answer was yes.’

Holding very still despite the warmth tingling where Novak's hands rest, and the flutter of heat building beneath the brush of callus-rough fingertips on bare skin where his t-shirt's ridden up, Andy swallows until he's sure his voice will come out smooth, curling only slightly into flirtatious at the edges.

'I can be quiet. I've had a lot of practice.'

It's the wrong thing to say; knows it instantly when Novak sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. That's the sound of a client in discomfort, not happy with an angle or the pressure – the sound that means Andy's fucked up and usually he'll get the paddle or rough annoyance or worse, a complaint to the agency, prices dropped and weeks of living on leftover rice Mr Wu lets him have for pennies from the restaurant across the street. It’s a _bad sound_ and Andy swallows against a sudden flush of panic.

But Novak doesn't pull away – doesn't even even frown, instead considering Andy with a pensive look like a puzzle he's not sure how to start.

'If I say yes,' he says, tentative, 'that is one thing you do not need to do.'

Andy hesitates, heart still hammering. 'Be quiet?'

With a sigh, Novak shakes his head and seems to struggle for a moment, frowning over the words. 'Be- _on offer,_ like something from a menu. I am convinced I like you, Andy. I do not need the advertising like I may change my mind.'

'Oh.' Andy mulls on that for a second, oddly stung, not quite sure whether to allow himself to let it go. It sharpens the edge of his voice when he answers. 'So if you're convinced, why aren't we kissing?'

Maybe it's the fading light casting favourable shadows, or maybe it's just that Andy's letting himself half-trust to the sure press of hands and closeness, letting himself be fooled. But the look Novak gives him is wide-eyed and lit with affection, ignoring that he'd almost snapped the words or maybe amused by it, breathtakingly fond.

'Because you have a head injury and I try to be a responsible adult for once in my life?' he murmurs, tilting a fraction forward into Andy's space. 'Perhaps because we say we talk and we do not yet, not about this and it is worth the thought, you are worth the thought. It is not simple.'

'No,' Andy agrees, but he grudgingly allows himself to cant forward with the weight of gravity until Novak's hands, curved steady on his hips through the borrowed sweatpants, are the only thing holding them apart.

He's still not certain he isn't building this up to be more than it is, letting himself be tripped into a delusion of affection. If Novak will even remember his name in two weeks with Wimbledon as a shiny golden distraction.

But he's sure of this moment now. Sure he's reading it right that Novak's hesitating for some other reason – okay, other than _just_ – just simply Andy being a hooker. Knows it's up to Andy to make the first move and prove this thing between them can be workable in the physical if nowhere else, up to him to escalate it for them to get what they both want.

'You know what though, we might be over-doing the thinking part,' he says. It’s his standard scripted lead-in with nervous clients but in the next breath he stumbles over an unexpected urge to let an actual secret spill out.

One he's never told a client since that night a lifetime ago when the man, Shawn, whispered, _'have you done this before?'_ and made a pleased sound when Andy shook his head, gasping and stretched open, _no_.

He keeps the ache of it tucked away unspoken, where it can't gut him by accident when he's mid-fuck, when he's letting the client hold him down, but now it tries to claw up itself up from where it's been lodged. _Every time I've fucked anyone in my life, it's been thinking about selling myself and price tags and what everyone expects. What everyone else wants. I don't want this to be about that; I want it to be because I want it, too._

He swallows again against the raw bleach-burn of the words in his throat, the way it feels a little like flaying himself open to let them out – and it's too much too offer, ingrained caution holding it back.

'For once, I'd just like to- see what happens?' he says instead, the half-truth the best he can manage. 'I like you, I'd like to see where this goes before we worry too much.'

Novak's fingers play across the waistband of his borrowed sweatpants, tapping out a nervous beat that sings shivers across Andy's every nerve. His smile is oddly muted and, with an air of quiet confession, he says;

'Last time I "see what happens", it did not go so well.'

But, just as Andy's heart finishes sinking down to his ankles, he takes a steadying breath and determination firms into the fine lines around his eyes, his hands going sure and drawing Andy in. 'But maybe practice make perfect, yeah?'

'Yeah,' Andy agrees, a bare rasp of sound. Then Novak's shifting forward, close and out of focus and finally, _finally_ they're kissing.

Everything settles, because this, the shape of someone else's mouth and the acquiescence in the way Novak gives easily beneath his touch, letting himself be pressed gently back against the wall so Andy can straddle his thighs, this Andy knows much better than words. Like last time, the last kiss, there's a tentative sweetness in the way they measure each other for a minute, in the brush of Novak's fingertips over Andy's arms that asks _okay?_ , in the flex of Andy's grip at his waist that reassures.

Unlike last time or the one before, only the handful of times they’ve worked this out, there's no awareness of time ticking away. They have all night, and from the way Novak hustled them upstairs Andy's pretty sure there must've been a plan with Marian to keep the rest of Novak's team from interrupting. There'll be no strangers on the Tube here, no calls to practice or Marian's knock on the door.

For the first time he can focus entirely on Novak, the body-heat soaking the layers between them, the wondering half-smile that curves against the kiss and the puff of a laugh when Andy discovers a ticklish spot tucked along the curve of his ribs.

Maybe by next week he'll be back in a hotel room, mouth full of dick and a stranger's hands yanking his hair, but for now, beneath the soft, wet press of Novak’s mouth, he pushes the thoughts of Annalise and clients and unpaid rent down out of sight. For tonight, he can have this.

No sooner thought it than the anxiety tries to push back up again, when Novak makes a soft sound that's uncertain without quite becoming a question.

‘Andy,’ he murmurs, accent gone thick as if he can’t quite force his voice to cooperate. ‘You will tell me yes, if I am taking the advantage?’

The nerves sitting in Andy’s stomach tighten instantly into roiling unhappiness. Maybe a little bit angry too and he yanks back sharply, trying not to notice the rime of sea-green in Novak’s eyes when they go wide, the way his heart flutters with the urge to let his irritation go in case he fucks this right up.

‘Just because I let people fuck me for money doesn’t mean I don’t understand _yes_ and _no_ ,’ he hisses instead, because bitterness is preferable to letting out the tears building hot behind his eyes. Knows Novak’s only trying to be kind but he had this, they were there and now _this._

He's so tired of hedging his words to what everyone else wants, of being treated like less than himself. Less than a _person._

Novak’s gone still, frowning a little. He’s listening but there’s something confused flickering over his expression that promises an argument and Andy can’t, he _can’t_ deal with this fight right now.

‘Last I checked you’re not paying me to be here,’ he snaps before Novak can interrupt, ‘which means the only person keeping me here is me. Being a whore doesn’t mean I’ll just let anyone who fancies it hold me down and shove their dick up my arse, alright?!’

Novak winces. Too late Andy remembers the open doors, the balcony, Wimbledon village sitting in the quiet evening just beyond the garden wall and oh, that last might’ve been a bit loud.

To his credit though, Novak doesn’t so much as glance to check for anyone eavesdropping down in the garden. Instead he meets Andy’s eyes directly, only hunching his shoulders slightly under the glare.

‘That is not what I was meaning,’ he says, quiet even with the flush of arousal swept over his cheeks, hands trembling where they touch. ‘I am sorry – perhaps I did not phrase it so well but I like you Andy. I would not want to do anything you do not want is all.’

This, _again,_ and _fuck_ the open doors; Andy lets his anger well up into an almost-shout from exasperation and tiredness, headache pressing in his temples:

‘Why would you think I didn’t want this? I’m _here_ aren’t I?!’

For all that Novak doesn’t flinch, the line of his mouth pulls flat. That shuttered fake politeness flickers, frays and he glances away, dropping his gaze to stare at a patch of nothing on the carpet. His answer’s so soft, Andy almost misses it.

‘But you did leave, he says, strained down to the raw edges of his voice. 'The first time.''

Andy freezes. 'What?'

'When the guard let me out the station, you know I chase you three streets before I think, maybe I have no right. Maybe I should take the hint.' Novak gives him a sideways look. 'Running away is a clear message, no?’

It comes out muted barely above a murmur, thready with effort but the words hit like someone’s punched Andy in the stomach.

He’d known running away like that was a shit thing to do, even before Kim stuck the guilt knife in about the risks Novak was taking asking him home in the first place, but he’d mostly just been worried that Novak would be _annoyed._ Been framing the problem as Novak being ditched in the middle of London because Andy spooked at the mere mention of tennis.

He’d never considered that Novak might take it to mean that Andy didn’t want _him._ Or that Novak cared enough to chase him, and enough to give up.

‘Oh,’ he says, swallows when his voice threatens to waver. ‘Oh shit that wasn’t- that wasn’t what that was about. I didn’t know if it was about me or – or you know, the easy fuck, but I didn’t _care,_ I liked you. Like you. I wanted to go home with you.’ When he brings his hand up to trace an apology along the deep lines of Novak’s frown, it shakes with the effort the honesty takes. ‘I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t want to abandon you.’

Beneath his fingertips, Novak’s miserable expression relaxes slightly but doesn’t vanish. He’s still avoiding Andy’s eyes.

‘But why else would you run?’ he asks, raw with resurfaced hurt and Andy goes light-headed with shock all over again. Novak must’ve thought about this – maybe run it over and over in his head the same as Andy would’ve done, looking for the misstep he’d made to cause the loss. Tennis is all tactics and post-match analysis, he remembers that much, and it’s pretty clear now that Novak doesn’t live the glittering party life Andy’d been imagining so there’d be no distractions from dissecting whatever that encounter on the Tube could be called. An interlude. An ill-advised fuck.

An _insult,_ and Andy squeezes his eyes shut, swallowing his urge to stumble out meaningless excuses. If he had any illusions about Novak being the one calling the shots here, he’s fast reevaluating.

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats, voice cracking over his guilt. ‘Novak, I promise it wasn’t anything you did. It’s- me, my fuck-up okay?’ Opening his eyes he inches forward, trying to cant apology into the curve of his shoulders. ‘I’m pretty shit at this sort of thing when it’s not my job. And even when it _is_ my job actually, as you might have noticed.’

‘So why-’ Novak catches the question with his lip between his teeth, shaking his head, but at least he looks back up at Andy and the misery in his expression softens to something that could be called a smile, if seen sideways through a squint. ‘Nevermind. We are both doing this all backwards yes, to have the sex before the telling each other we want it?’

‘Ass backwards,’ Andy agrees and, because Novak said _we_ and not _you,_ he dares to dip forward to brush a kiss where Novak’s still worrying at his lip.

‘Running wasn’t about you,’ he mutters without leaning back so he can pretend he’s not blushing, words ragged and pressing his sincerity into Novak’s mouth. ‘This is the first good thing to happen to me in as long as I can remember. This time I’ll be here until you kick me out, I promise.’

A hand comes up to curl at the back of his neck, Novak shifting beneath him to get a better angle for the kiss that’s as much an answer as words.

It fast turns warm and desperate on both sides, crowding close to each other in mutual need to soothe all their ragged edges. Andy’s half-hard again by the time they break with shared gasps for air and through the layers between them he can feel that Novak’s not far off either, gets a hiss of something strangled in Serbian when he shifts his weight forward just right.

He hesitates long enough to be sure it wasn’t a protest but Novak’s trembling beneath him with a needy little sound buried in the corner of Andy's mouth, breath hiccuping out fast as they rock together and there’s no resistance in his grip dropping to Andy’ shoulder to tug him closer, in his free hand fumbling under Andy’s shirt to trace his curiosity over bare skin.

Still- ‘Here?’ Andy murmurs. Probably not the best idea to do this next to the open window, not when they pushed their luck enough the first time.

There’s a glimmer of hesitation in Novak's touch and he draws back – just far enough that when he speaks, their lips still brush.

‘Andy,’ he says, stumbling a little, ‘would it be okay not to- you know. Is only, I have to practice tomorrow, a match Monday, and I am not so familiar with this way.’

Andy quirks a confused eyebrow, leaning back to bring Novak’s frown into focus. ‘With doing it on the floor?’

Novak takes a shaky breath. ‘With men.’

‘ _Oh_ ,’ Andy says, startled. Annoyed at himself underneath it, because Kim _told_ him and he’d suspected back on the Tube but he’d forgotten, let himself be diverted by his own panic. Suddenly he regrets his outburst of a minute ago; it should’ve been him asking Novak that question, if he’d been thinking with his head instead of his dick.

First-time clients aren't his forte because they tend to go for pretty, for the professional model shots Annalise organises for her better hookers but he's done it enough to know the principles; be sure without demanding, offer just enough honesty to build an understanding without undermining the situation, take the extra time to get it right. All the mental notes he’s made over the years tumble through his head and get dismissed because none of them were made with this in mind. Novak deserves better than learned lines.

‘I didn’t- of course, we can take it slow,’ he says, slow, trying to find the right words. ‘Or if you want to- you know, to me, that’s not a big deal. I don’t have to play tennis.’

The smile that Novak gives him isn’t anything like sure of himself but it’s there, a flicker of relief lurking behind it and in the trace of his fingertips up Andy’s neck, exploring along his stubble-rough jaw.

'No, I think-’ Shifting, he pushes up and Andy lets himself be pulled to his feet, catching himself against the wall with a gasp as they press together, the pressure sparking a luminous wash of heat over every inch of his skin.

‘I think this,’ Novak says, breathless, ‘we try this for now, and I am happy if you are.’

‘I’m fantastic,’ Andy murmurs. When Novak turns to close the curtains, swaths of gauze cutting them off from the outside world and the fading sunset, he takes the distraction to catch the hem of the Serb’s t-shirt. It's yanked over his head before Novak has time to gasp in surprise.

‘Well if _that’s_ how it is,’ he says after a second to catch himself. His grin echoes Andy’s, the silent flicker of a dare accepted and the trip to the bed descends into a battle to get each other naked the fastest, fumbling hands and Andy tripping on his sweatpants, Novak catching him with a burst of laughter muffled against his shoulder.

Andy wins – he's had plenty of practice shucking his clothes while distracted – but when they tumble to the bed with Novak a long tanned stretch contrasting to the white sheets beneath him, the beautiful lean lines of every muscle and the flushed red curve of his cock, he’s hit with an utterly unexpected rush of nerves. His hands freeze, hovering over the dip of Novak’s hips without quite bringing himself to touch.

‘Andy?’ Pushing up on one elbow, the look Novak gives him is tentative. Suddenly unsure of himself again. ‘What is it?’

Andy swallows. _Honesty_.

‘This,’ he says hoarsely, dipping trembling fingers along the sharp definition of Novak’s abs, the paler boundary of suntan along his narrow hips that begs to be licked. Spread out naked and nowhere to hide, impossibly lovely in comparison to Andy’s sharp angles, the way he knows he’s edging on too-thin beneath the poor effort at keeping fit. ‘Look- alright it’s stupid but, you look like you just fell out of a fucking magazine. Like I imagined you.’

‘But you do this always- no, no that was not a bad thing,’ Novak says hastily when Andy can’t control his grimace. He scrambles upright, graceless in a flail of long limbs, and reaches out, fingers trembling against the sharp line of Andy’s frown. ‘Is not allowed for both of us to panic and I have the first call, being the junior at this. You get to tell me what I must do, okay?’

‘I think telling me I’m not allowed to panic counts as telling me what to do,’ Andy sighs but he allows himself to be guided into another kiss and somehow, with his eyes closed and all Novak’s impossibly sculpted curves reduced to the familiar drag of warm skin against his, to the flushed heat of a cock beneath his palm and a stuttered gasp between them, his panic calms and body-memory takes over.

Novak tips back against the mattress when he pushes, impact jolting a laugh into the kiss. Encouraged, Andy presses down over him, automatically adjusting his hips to give his hand space. When it closes over both of them together, shared friction, Novak jolts up with a breathy whine.

‘Oh god, Andy, _Andy, please_ don't stop, don't don't- _.’_

‘I’ve got you,’ Andy murmurs, dragging the words along the stubble-rough edge of Novak’s jaw, dipping down to bite at the soft spot beneath, too gentle to leave a mark, though Novak hisses in a breath all the same. Tightening his fingers just enough to ignite a flicker of something glittering and hot everywhere they touch, feeling Novak twitch. ‘If I do anything you don’t like, tell me.’

‘I- _ah-_ I like all things you do.’ With a full-body shiver, Novak gets his heels planted against the bed and arches up with a groan, grinding into Andy’s hand. He’s panting already, heartbeat fluttering against the palm Andy slides down his chest, mapping by marvelling, hungry touch and he leaves the memory of his nails along the line of Novak’s ribs, flexing his grip to coax an unexpected spill of pleading Serbian from Novak’s lips. Andy’s terrible at languages but he likes them, the promise of something exotic and the soft way the sounds trip off Novak’s tongue, liquid and mysterious.

But they left the balcony doors open, thin curtains no kind of barrier and he hastily leans down to muffle the sound with a kiss. Honestly, the last thing he needs is Marian making sarcastic remarks on what Novak’s shouting in bed when Andy hasn’t a fucking clue how to translate.

‘Alright?’ he asks without lifting his head, licking it into Novak’s warm mouth. The sound he gets in return isn’t quite a recognisable word in any language but it’s affirmative enough, Novak pushing his hips up in sharp, begging jerks as Andy rolls his thumb across the head of his cock, precome dripping slick between them. Andy’s not far off if he wanted to speed this up, arousal clenching tight beneath the friction of his palm – he knows his limits to the second, knows how to drive himself to the edge fast, how draw himself out with pace and pressure and the sweet ache of desperation – but Novak’s shaking, hands fisted in the rumpled sheets as he ruts up and Andy wonders suddenly how long it’s been for him before this, before the Tube.

Wonders if the loneliness that echoes in everything Novak’s half-said carries over to this, too.

The last flutter of uncertainty vanishes beneath a wave of certain. He may not be good for much but he’s practiced this, four years of fumbling through making strangers feel good until he can do it in his sleep and Novak forgave him for the Tube, rescued him when he could’ve walked away and never, ever made Andy feel this was inevitable.

The least he can do is use every second of his hard-won expertise to pay that trust back.

Without slowing the pace of his hand around them both, he reaches up to press the index finger of the other into the wet heat of Novak’s mouth, where his tongue had been a second earlier. Novak’s eyes flicker open, pupils blown wide but his confusion is obvious in the wary look, the sudden crease of his frown.

‘Trust me?’ Andy whispers.

It tilts more tentative than he intended but it must be convincing, because Novak swallows around the finger and nods. His lips are a flush of pink against Andy’s paler skin, bruised bright from kissing, and in the diffuse light filtering through the curtains, painting the room luminous and soft, his eyes are a gleam of pale colour behind the dark framing lashes. A study in contrasts, beautiful, and Andy can’t hold back his awkward smile, ducking to hide it with a trail of kisses along Novak’s cheek as he works his tongue, sloppy and hot, around the crook of Andy's finger.

When Andy slides it out with a wet _pop_ , he can see the question right behind it in the twist of Novak's lips, poised to ask. Plain curiosity rather than nerves now and Andy easily cuts him off with another kiss, shifting his weight to his knees on the tangled sheets, bracketed by Novak's thighs (toned, all slender muscle and the _positions_ he could probably hold, fuck). Distracted beneath his hand and his mouth, Novak moves his legs wider when Andy nudges, obedient and pliable.

Until Andy slips his wet finger further down and Novak tenses with a choked sound, eyes flying open.

‘Andy!'

Because he knows a squawk of surprise from a genuine protest, Andy doesn't slow the deliberate rub of his fingertip over the puckered skin. Every circle is rewarded with a hitched little gasp, Novak's grip on the sheets gone white-knuckled.

‘I promise you won’t feel it tomorrow,’ he murmurs, watching Novak’s throat work as he swallows his desperate sounds, blinking rapidly, ‘but I’ll stop if you want.’

Novak swallows again. ‘Don’t-’ He has to pause to shiver all over, his voice wavering. ‘ _Don’t_ stop, oh god. Please.’

Andy grins at him, wide and reassuring, quietly pleased. ‘Okay.’

With only the slick of spit and the dry friction of skin, he has to be careful – there’s packets of lube in his jeans pockets, he remembers, thinks _next time_ – but Novak’s vocal in his enthusiasm and Andy memorises which flick of his wrist gets a curse, the way tension tightens visibly at the corners of Novak’s eyes when he grips a shade too tight. The polite mask is gone, shredded to nothing beneath Andy’s hands and his own pleasure is an afterthought to the study of Novak’s, the bitten-red curve of his mouth as he pants, the dazed flicker of his gaze, the way he fumbles up a hand gone clumsy with bliss to tangle in Andy’s hair.

Only years of practice keep Andy focused, keeps his hands moving and the distracting tug of his own desperation pushed back, away; the urge to curl down and hide from Novak’s wide-eyed regard is almost overwhelming. The few men, clients, who ever ask him to take control in bed are always wary, holding back pieces of themselves even as they let a stranger open them up – even when they’re calling the shots, anyway. Andy’s never questioned it because _hooker_ and all the baggage that comes with that; there’s knowing in principle that someone won’t say no and then there’s trust, two entirely different things..

Andy understands it, almost, the want for something uncomplicated, the comfort in getting what you want without the song and dance to get there, but never quite forgetting that it isn’t real _._ He knows, intimately, what pretending looks like.

In contrast Novak, stretched out under Andy’s hands in a beautiful sprawl of slender muscle and soft, desperate sounds, is an open book with footnotes and illustrations, giving everything. His eyes rest on Andy’s face whenever he can keep them open, intent in a way that suggests he’s trying to learn this, too; there’s nothing suspicious in his enthusiastic noises, in the way he smiles lopsided whenever he catches Andy watching and Andy chases every gasp of pleasure almost greedily, hoarding the honest memory of each one like a gift and refining the rhythm of his hand and fingers until Novak’s gaze loses focus, the Serb writhing against sheets gone damp with sweat.

Eventually his voice slips higher, begging desperation in a nonsensical hotchpotch of languages, losing any coherence in any of them and Andy knows by instinct and practice that it’s time, just right, and his circling finger pushes _in._

The shout Novak catches behind his teeth must be audible downstairs – but neither of them care because Novak’s coming, muscles fluttering around the crook of Andy’s knuckle as he spills all over both of them, slick and wet. Andy barely has a few breaths to imagine how good it would feel if they were actually fucking before the thought tips him over and he slams into his own orgasm with a gasp of surprise, the room whiting out behind his screwed-shut eyes and heat washing over him, glittering and brilliant.

He rides it over the edge until it winds down, tension relaxing and he blinks back to focus to realise he’s curled over, gasping for air, his forehead resting on Novak’s sweaty chest. Can feel the ragged rise and fall of Novak’s breathing as he struggles to get it under control, shivers of aftershock still racing between them as Andy uncurls his fingers from around them both, careful because his hands are shaking.

After a minute, there’s a tug on his hair – Novak didn’t yank but he didn’t lose his grip, either – and Andy follows it up, lets himself be pulled into a soft, clumsy kiss.

‘ _Amazing_ ,’ Novak breathes against it, muffled by the broad curve of his grin. Andy doesn’t have time to ask if he means the sex or Andy before he gets Novak’s tongue in his mouth and he decides it doesn’t really matter, after all.

 

*

 

‘Right, explain to me again where we’re going?’ Andy asks.

Outside the car windows London flashes past beneath a washed-clean blue sky, grey concrete and regimented townhouses softened by the mid-morning sunshine. They’re somewhere near Kensington, Andy thinks, but he doesn’t get many calls this way; most men who can afford those townhouses can likewise afford a higher class of hooker.

He can’t work out why they’re heading for the centre of London. Surely Novak isn’t planning to practice in the middle of Hyde Park?

At the other end of the backseat, a careful arms-length away because Marian’s up front but so is an official Wimbledon driver, casting them the occasional impassive glance, Novak smiles. He’s in tennis clothes again, not whites this time but Adidas-branded t-shirt in an obnoxious shade of red and expensive moisture-wicking shorts that off the hanger would cost more than Andy’s food budget for three weeks. He knows because they’re identical to the pair he’s wearing, that Novak tossed at him carelessly as he came out the shower and that still had the tags on an hour ago.

‘I have not told you yet, so I will not be tricked into revealing now,’ Novak teases and deflects Andy’s glare with a shrug. ‘Is fine, is people you were worried about yes? Marian has distracted the others with excuses-

'Lies,' Marian interjects pointedly from the front seat.

'With tiny _necessary_ lies, and there will be be no one around here I promise. I need only to hit the ball for a while, does not matter if you don’t know how.’

‘Not what I’m worried about,’ Andy mutters and looks away from the sharp flare of Novak’s curiosity, back out at London slowing to a crawl as they hit traffic.

That morning, when he’d opened his eyes to sun filtered hazy across tangled sheets and an empty bed beside him, he’d had enough time to be briefly, fiercely disappointed. After last night, after the sex and the lazy kisses that followed, he’d thought maybe they’d worked out something like an understanding.

It didn’t help that he’d dreamed of Novak drenched in the morning sunlight falling across the bed, languorous and affectionate like a sleepy cat and curving into Andy before either of them were quite awake; dreamed of what the press of sleep-flushed skin in the morning would be like when it wasn’t just a hassle that required a renegotiation of _one night_ terms. He’d woken already wanting like a hunger in his core, reaching out before he’d opened his eyes.

The disappointment when he met empty sheets had a bare minute to settle before the bathroom door creaked open. Novak had padded out, all over dripping wet with a towel caught precariously on the jut of his hips and oh okay, Andy’s dick overruled his head and decided that sight was worth waking up to a hundred empty beds.

Noticing Andy’s hungry stare Novak'd grinned, brilliant even in the liquid-gold sunlight and crossed to the bed, flopping down damp and easily tactile as he pressed a mint-sharp kiss to Andy’s mouth, his hair scattering cool water all over them and taking his time, skating curious fingertips along the hard lines of Andy’s hips. The niggling anxiety in Andy’s stomach had almost calmed, right up until Novak whispered against his mouth;

‘Come to practice with me?’

Andy’d pulled back, not quite masking his flinch. ‘What?!’

‘I got you a guest pass to Wimbledon yesterday.’ There was nothing like guile in Novak’s wide eyes, only a coaxing hope. ‘You say your head is okay, yes, not dizzy at all? We take it easy and it will be fun, I promise. I show you around-’

‘ _No_.’

It’d come out flatter than Andy intended, still too sharp if the frown line dimpling between Novak’s eyebrows was an honest reflection of hurt. But-

‘I can’t,' he'd mumbled, looking away. 'Sorry. I can't go to Wimbledon.’

With slow consideration Novak had leaned back to take him in, still frowning. ‘Wimbledon?’

‘I can’t,’ Andy’d repeated. ‘There’s people I’m- it’d be a bad idea, trust me,’

‘Hmm.’ Novak considered him a few seconds longer and, just when Andy was beginning to ache with the weight of it, with trying to imagine how he’d even _begin_ to explain this – Novak swooped in and pressed a quick, damp kiss to his cheek.

‘Give me five minute,’ he’d said, his grin a bright, beautiful thing. ‘I make some calls.’

Which led here, from sneaking out of Novak's ridiculous rented house into an official tournament car waiting at the kerb, panic ringing in Andy's head the entire time until they slipped into the Sunday city traffic around Putney and Wimbledon's mansions and walled gardens vanished in the rearview. Even then Novak wouldn't say where they were heading – breaking from his teasing for a bemused aside, 'You really don't follow tennis huh? You know to hold the racquet at the narrow end, yes?' - and Andy's walled himself off from any mention of sport for so long, turned away from Wimbledon posters in the Tube every year and it's not as if he's been able to afford newspapers anyway. Actively thinking about tennis again is setting off phantom aches and a growing nausea, tucking his hands into tight fists in his lap so Novak won't see them shake.

He has no idea why he let himself get pulled in; concussion, old injuries, grass allergies, the excuses stack up easily on his tongue only to die, silent, in the face of Novak's wide-eyed gleaming excitement. The hit of it last night as Novak whispered approval into his skin, the all-encompassing warmth of the regard, set something uncoiling beneath, unexpected and possessive.

He's always been a success junkie, probably because he gets it so rarely, but there's something about making Novak happy that's- better. Knowing that Novak's seen him dishevelled and a disaster, has literally scraped him up off London's streets and still looks at Andy like he's something marvellous – it makes him want to keep trying to measure up. Makes him feel, impossibly, that maybe he won't be a failure forever.

If keeping that regard means playing tennis again, he'll grit his teeth and pick up a racquet.

'We are here,' Novak says and Andy tears his blank stare from the passing houses that have suddenly got a lot fancier, to glance up at the sign arching over the approaching gateway.

'You have to be shitting me,' he says when he finds his voice again and catches Novak's Cheshire Cat grin out the corner of his eye, satisfied at his surprise.

'Players often practice here during Wimbledon. They owe me favour and no one else booked in this morning so they say, all ours.'

Andy swallows as the car sweeps through the imposing gates of the Queen's Club, nestled in a prim splash of grass-green courts overlooked by a square of Victorian townhouses that he couldn't afford in a lifetime of fucking. There's still some lone stands set up, scattered remnants of vivid red branding from the tournament he knows ended recently – two weeks ago? One? – because he might avoid the posters, but the Tube is plastered in them and he's not blind.

But behind the half-dismantled stands and the advertising and the easy way the uniformed steward waved them through the gate, the clubhouse across the square still looks like a country mansion. The trimmed stretch of courts to his left are marked in fresh, crisp white, so pristine it almost shines.

For all that he doesn't follow tennis any more, he did once and now he has the added experience of scraping out a living in London; he's pretty certain he doesn't have enough money to even breathe the air here.

'What was the favour?' he asks, voice a dry rasp. In the rearview, he catches Marian giving him a sharp glance.

Novak shrugs, distracted as he collects up his phone and hoodie, opening the door before they've quite stopped in the parking space. 'Not so much really. Is only, I want to pull out this year but they ask me nicely not to, so I play. Probably not so much a favour but I am not going to turn down a quiet practice eh? Come on, I show you the locker room before we get on court. Is prettier even than Wimbledon.'

He's out of the car before Andy can ask _play what,_ which is probably a good thing since he gets it a second later, feels monumentally stupid and for a few seconds all he can do is breathe until he can unclench his grip on the leather seat.

Up front the driver is getting out too, going to help Novak unload the tennis bags from the boot, but on a glance up Andy catches Marian still watching him in the mirror.

'He played the tournament here?' he asks after a moment.

'For sure he did, and good it was too. He should not be letting personal feelings distract him from tennis,' Marian says cryptically, and then he turns to look at Andy properly, raising a sarcastic eyebrow that for the first time could just be a front to hide the flicker of sympathy beneath. 'You knew he was famous though, yes? That tournaments ask for him, that he has influence, that should not be such a shock.'

'I know, I know, it's just-' _Just what,_ Andy wonders. He'd given up on this so long ago, can he really he jealous? 'It's just different to see it in action, that's all.'

'Mmmm. Well he lost here, if that helps,' Marian says, but he mustn't be totally on side yet because he waits until Andy's half out the car to add, 'of course it was only to Nadal in the final,' and Andy almost falls on his face when he misses his footing.

Warm hands catch him, again, and he looks up into Novak's bemused smile.

'Careful, I already plan to let you have a head start in points. No need for another concussion as excuse.'

He's very close, his grip sure on Andy's arms and his mouth quirked around the smile, the joke lurking at the corners and in the laugh lines mapped around his eyes. In the sun he's burnished gold and all the places Andy kissed his way over last night, sweep of cheekbones and the trace of sunburn-pink on the sharp bridge of his nose, are right there within reach but they might as well be a thousand miles away under the driver's curious glance, Marian getting out of the car behind them.

'I've got another pick up request but I can come back for you in a couple of hours,' the driver says. 'That okay?'

Without taking his eyes off Andy, Novak shakes his head. ‘Take your time. We are not in a rush.’

Queen’s Club, Andy discovers during Novak’s casual and possibly-trespassing tour – ‘Oh the sign? No, _staff only_ means players also see, and guests, no one has ever told me I am not allowed. Or at least, not so I believed them’ – is plush and quietly, sumptuously overwhelming, the feel of money spilling from the fresh flowers in every alcove and the weight of the furniture when Andy trails numb fingertips across tabletops slick with polish. Nothing creaks, or has make-do-and-mend patches; he doubts the people who furnished the locker room in gleaming walnut and oak, who filled the wide dining room with the sparkle of silver and spotless white tablecloths, considered rooting through bargain bins at their local Oxfam. Even the glass in the picture frames is mirror-shined, gleaming smiles of past champions following Andy as he trails at Novak’s heels and he catches himself hunching down between his shoulders away from his own reflection, elbows tucked into his sides with the sense of intrusion prickling uncomfortably down his back.

‘It is not so impressive overall as Wimbledon or perhaps even Indian Wells of course,’ Novak says casually over his shoulder, missing the raised eyebrow Andy gives him because he’s pretty sure the Queen-of-fucking-England has summer palaces that aren’t as fancy as this. ‘But it is a good tournament. Did you watch any of it?’

‘No one bought me a ticket so I could give them a blow job in their off-court time-outs so, no,’ Andy says. He only runs it past his internal filter when Novak stumbles mid-stride in front of him, turns to blink a wide-eyed question over his shoulder. ‘Not er, that anyone’s ever done that! Or that _I_ would ever do that. I mean, that would be totally inappropriate and disrespectful to the game of tennis and please god, tell me that your coach isn’t standing behind me right now.’

Novak’s wince betrays the answer even before Marian says from behind him, dry as a desert,‘For both our sakes, in future please assume I am standing behind you at all times before describing ways you have ah- _disrespected_ tennis. Novak, the court is ready for us.’

‘Be right there,’ Novak says with a long-suffering eye roll and steps forward. Aware of his own bright red blush and wishing the carpet would swallow him in one plush gulp, Andy expects him to brush past in silent reprimand.

Instead, Novak pushes right up in his space and pauses. Up close, the rueful curve of his smile is soft and unfocused and Andy’s skin hums with the awareness of him just out of reach, the weight of the racquet bag against his hip and the warmth and spicy edge of aftershave rising from Novak far too close for propriety in – _shit_ , in full view of any club staff that might walk past any second.

Is he _insane_? The club might owe him a favour but all it’ll take is one groundskeeper with a camera phone-

‘Ignore Mr Crankypants,’ Novak murmurs and Andy loses grip on his panic, fighting against the urge to lean into Novak, bury his blush in the warm, steady curves of him. He’d half-forgotten what it’s like to _want_ to touch someone so badly that every inch of skin feels alight with it, like the tingling ache of a fresh sunburn; resisting takes every scrap of willpower he’s scraped together over the last four years.

Briefly, Novak’s fingers latch onto his and squeeze before he steps back, grins bright and steady as if Andy isn’t half-dizzy from the drive-by flirting.

‘Are you up for a tennis lesson?’ he asks. The only sign of teasing is in the brightness of his eyes, gleaming with amusement despite his poker face. I’ll go easy on you yeah?’

Andy swallows again against his gone-dry mouth. ‘Hey, I might surprise you.’

‘I’ll take my chances.’ Novak laughs as he turns to follow Marian and it’s joking, probably meant kindly but Andy catches the faint edge of condescension beneath.

His own answering jolt of- hurt, or perhaps anger? Thumps in his chest, takes him by surprise. Of course Novak would expect to be better than tennis at him; Novak does it as his _job_ and even Andy’s worked out by now that he must do it pretty well. It’s ridiculous, (and most likely hopeless), to want to be taken seriously when Andy’s not touched a racquet in over a decade.

Still. Any half-formed notion of playing terribly on purpose disappears in an instant, pride stung, and Andy straightens his shoulders from his hunch as he follows Novak back toward the locker room. So- fine, maybe he’s only here as an invited trespasser, not a player, and maybe he’s going to get crushed in straight sets.

But _screw_ rolling over and letting Novak win without trying. At the very least he can do his best not to humiliate himself.

 

 

That conviction carries him right up until they step out on court and immediately all his attempts at confidence wither beneath the shock.

‘Good, they have not taken away all stands,’ Novak says, pausing at the edge of the immaculate rectangle of grass and nodding, apparently in approval – Andy’s not sure he’s reading it right because he’s too busy trying not to let the panicked sound lodged in his throat claw its way past his clenched teeth. ‘All is kind of a mess which is pity but you get the idea. What do you think of a real tennis court eh?’

Andy’s first attempt to answer sticks in his dry throat. Clearing it, he offers the only word that comes to mind.

‘Er. Big?’

_Big_ doesn’t really cover it. _Vast_ might be more appropriate; the ranks of seats in the stands left over from the Championships, branded red and dazzling, seem to stretch out in front of Andy in tiers almost up to the cloudless blue sky. There’s gaps where some have been taken away or dismantled into neatly-stacked piles of scaffolding, the seats directly in front of the clubhouse gone completely apart from a forlorn framework of steel poles, but the rest of the stands tower up around them until Andy feels about six inches tall. Everything’s bright and hyper-real; the seats, the severe stripes of white lines, the net and trimmed grass waiting for players, patient and empty in the fresh grass-scented air.

Andy blames the glare of the sun for why he has to blink rapidly to stop his eyes watering because, it’s just a tennis court. It shouldn’t _matter_.

Letting his tennis bag slide to the ground at the edge of the grass, Novak makes a dismissive noise. ‘Big? Hah, one day I take you to see Ashe stadium and then you may see what _big_ is, and also watch a million Americans try to walk tiny aisles a mile off the ground while drunk, it always give me vertigo to look up. This is better, I always think it is cosy, yeah?’

He glances back at Andy and his grin falters. ‘Hey are you okay, you look- Is it your head? We do not have to play if you are not well, I can hit the ball at Marian, it’s fine… Andy?’

‘Yeah,’ Andy rasps out on autopilot, then forces himself to look away from the endless rows of empty seats to focus on Novak’s worried face. ‘No, I mean I’m fine. Went sun-blind for a second, that’s all. Should we warm up?’

‘If you are not up to it, we shouldn’t-’

‘I’m perfectly _fine_.’ Andy snaps and stalks past Novak’s startled look, deliberately scuffing his borrowed trainers to leave a dent in the immaculate court surface. Thinks he hears Marian mutter something but when he looks back under the pretense of lining up to stretch, Novak’s already jogging away, head down and Marian’s pulling racquets from the abandoned tennis bag with a frown. Andy looks guiltily away before it gets directed at him.

The tension snaps at them all through the warm-up. Andy works through the routine he uses before running with the prickling sensation of being watched but every time he glances over Novak’s focused elsewhere, stretching with his foot up on Marian’s shoulder or braced into lunges, everything in the set of his shoulders radiating concentration.

The air is warming up as the day drifts toward noon, trapped around them in the still, quiet bowl of the court and almost pleasant away from the concrete sun-trap that is the rest of London. The heady scent of crushed grass rises under Andy’s feet, and for all he’d snapped at Novak, he wonders if he has concussion after all because everything feels dreamy and just on the edge of focus, like the net and the stands and the grass might be insubstantial if he reaches out to touch. The more he tries to concentrate, the more the unreal pressure of it builds and builds and just when he thinks he’s going to have to shout or stomp off-court, anything to break the suffocating quiet, Novak calls across;

‘Ready?’

‘Yeah,’ Andy calls back and jogs over for a racquet. He’s built up a sweat and has to scrub his palms against his shorts before he accepts one from Marian, hand feeling unsteady against the soft grip. Novak’s at Marian’s side, twirling his own racquet and Andy can’t look at him so he looks at that instead, the sure steadiness of the long fingers against the white handle as he asks, ‘Are you serving first or me?’

The racquet hits the grass as Novak fumbles the catch. He crouches to pick it up before answering and Andy notices the hunch of his shoulders, the tension-jerkiness of his movements and the hazy unreality of the day sharpens in a wash of guilt. It’s not Novak’s fault this entire situation is throwing him off-balance, or that he’s wound tight with misery. Of all the places he could be, he should be grateful to be here; he should apologise, smooth things over for Novak’s important practice when he has Wimbledon tomorrow.

He hasn’t quite managed to form the words when Novak asks, cautious, ‘Do you know how?’ and the impulse vanishes in a fresh flare of Andy’s irritation.

‘Why don’t you show me how it’s done?’ he says, curt, and turns, resisting the urge to stamp like a petulant child as he walks across the court. Only when he glances up to find that Novak and Marian haven’t moved, staring at him with matching bewildered expressions, does Andy realises he’s automatically positioned himself correctly behind the deuce service box, his racquet braced in the ready position.

He probably should’ve pretended he didn’t know anything about tennis. _Shit_.

Too late now. Raising an eyebrow, he calls, ‘Should I keep warming up some more or..?’

Novak leaps into action so fast, he almost trips over his feet as he scrambles to the opposite side of the net. ‘No! No I’m ready, stay there, stay-’ Catching the tennis ball Marian tosses him, he lines up on the baseline and pauses, racquet poised, glancing down the court.

The calculating look that flickers across his expression reads as clear as a neon sign to Andy. Up until this moment Novak must’ve been intending to take it easy on him – pull his punches on the serve, knock the ball around with a few laughs as he taught Andy to hit a forehand, and probably rounding off with a grope in the locker room afterward. Not once had he considered that Andy might keep up with him and honestly, Andy doesn’t blame him; he’s pretty certain himself he’s going to fall on his face in the next ten seconds.

Still, now the doubt has taken root, the _what if…_

The decision he reaches reads as clearly as the thoughts behind it and Andy has the briefest second to wonder if Novak is this transparent in actual match situations before the serve’s coming at him, out wide and a shade off full speed – Novak not quite pulling his punches but knocking a few mph off it, Andy’s sure.

Must have, because reflex takes over but for any serve that fast it should still be impossible that Andy’s there to meet the ball as it bounces up, feet moving without him consciously intervening. He’d forgotten the satisfying impact of a solid hit, every muscle moving like a synchronised explosion of action, better than sex and his backhand’s timed to improbable, lucky perfection.

The ball ricochets back over the net, skimming past Novak’s racquet in an outright winner.

There’s silence after the echo of the ball hitting the siding, bouncing off to roll away unheeded. For a few seconds Andy can only stare at patch of grass where it hit – yes, right side of the lines, the ball was good, his irritation from before dying in the fizzing rush of adrenaline and a crushing sense of dread. He takes an extra breath to brace himself as he looks up.

Novak’s wide-eyed stare, half-delighted, half-bemused, meets him from the other side of the net. He looks like someone just handed him a Christmas and birthday present combined, unexpected and potentially a trap, and he’s looking for the catch before he lets himself be pleased.

From the sidelines, Marian makes a startled noise as if jerking himself from a daze and clears his throat.

‘Love-fifteen,’ he calls. There’s a strangled note underneath it, as he’s had to choke it not to come out on a laugh.

‘Er,’ Andy says. His blush feels hotter than the sun burning through his t-shirt, creeping out under the weight of Novak’s stare, pride in his own shot tempered by dismay at the inevitable questions. For once in his life, would it have been so bad to simply _lose_? ‘Sorry?’

He’s pretty sure he hears Marian stifle another laugh in a cough.

For a breathless second, Novak doesn’t look away – doesn’t even blink. There’s the thin line of a frown sitting between his eyebrows, and Andy wishes he could reverse the last minute, wishes he’d stop letting annoyance goad him into showing off, wishing he was less of an _idiot_ -

Then Novak blinks, and a grin chases away the frown into fast-dawning glee, lighting him up all over.

‘Oh it is ON now!’ he shouts across the net and Andy doesn’t have time to process the complicated sensation that blooms in his chest, tangled and sweet, before the next serve hammers toward him and he’s too busy hurling himself after it.

He loses more points than he wins, naturally. It’s been years and he’s hardly match-fit; even with the racquet feeling easier in his hand game after game, even with the motion of his serve smoothing out until Novak almost forgets to return between sneaking bewildered glances at him, it was only ever going one way. In the fourth game, Novak breaks his serve; by five-two Andy’s gasping for breath, thighs protesting every sudden lunge and sweat soaking his borrowed t-shirt as he buries his forehand return in the bottom of the net. As soon as Marian calls the score, he waves a pleading hand and sinks to the sun-warm grass.

‘Time out?!’ he shouts, waiting just long enough to catch Novak’s nod before flopping to lie on his back, sprawling across the court and closing his eyes against the sweeping infinity of blue sky. He can feel the promise of aches tomorrow in every muscle, the ache of sunburn creeping across the bridge of his nose, but it all pales in comparison to the dread clenching in his stomach.

Any minute now Novak’ll come over; any minute now, he’ll _ask_.

And Andy has no idea how to compress years of his life down into an explanation that makes sense, that would sound anything other than pathetic here in the sun-drenched luxury of an exclusive club, wearing professional tennis gear that’s worth more than he is. Even if he was better with words, he wouldn’t know where to start. This easy thing between them is all surface and sex, and he can’t expect Novak to keep accepting more complications in return for something so new.

The thump of Novak dropping down next to him interrupts his half-serious contemplation of simply running away. Again. Chickening out, Andy keeps his eyes closed.

‘So,’ Novak remarks after a minute, tone pointedly neutral behind slight breathlessness, ‘you are doing pretty well,’

‘Maybe.’ Andy can’t stop his fists clenching with tension where they’re tucked behind his head, hearing the grass tear. ‘Pretty sure I would’ve won if I’d been given that head start in points I was promised. I’ll be complaining to the officials.’

Novak snorts. ‘Too late, Marian has seen how it really is. It was offer made under – how you say? Pretenses? I did not realise I was so bad at tennis when I offer.’

‘You’re great at tennis,’ Andy protests without thinking and winces, realising the deliberate conversational trap he’s tripped into. He can feel the sweat pooling uncomfortably in the hollow of his back, the burn of exhilaration waning to the dull, steady ache of too much exercise. ‘I mean, maybe I’m just having a good day.’

Novak’s quiet for an agonising few seconds. ‘A good day would not teach you a technically excellent serve.’

It’s too direct for Andy to sidestep anymore and he opens his eyes, pushing reluctantly upright. Novak’s sitting cross-legged, watching him with a half-smile that’s written over badly-masked curiosity but that’s it, no accusation or suspicion that Andy’s been hiding this monumental thing. Marian’s off down the opposite end of the court collecting wayward tennis balls, there’s a couple of sparrows chirping idly from the stands over the distant hum of traffic, and overall it’s all rather lacking in the dramatic fanfare Andy’s expected from this moment when he manages to say;

‘I used to play tennis. For a while, when I was younger.’

When he doesn’t elaborate, Novak quirks up an eyebrow. ‘And?’

‘You know. Life happened.’ Uncomfortable with the half-truth Andy looks away, reaching down to pull up a handful of grass to give himself something to fiddle with. ‘I never went anywhere with it. You know how it is with sports, sometimes it doesn’t work out.’

‘This I do know,’ Novak agrees. The odd inflection has Andy glancing up, just in time to catch the fleeting wistfulness that crosses his face. ‘But if not tennis, then how-’

_How did you end up fucking people for money,_ he’s going to ask, Andy can hear the echo of it already and panic seizes in his chest like being stabbed. He _hates_ that question, even when he has no intention of giving an honest answer; no matter what explanation he offers, sympathy or worse, pity, is the inevitable reaction and it’s like salt on open wounds every time, the bleach-burn of shame enough to drown in. He doesn’t need pity and it was his terrible fucking choices that landed him in this anyway, no explanation needed.

Instead of finishing the sentence, Novak breaks off. Takes a breath and Andy hears him let it go as a sigh, blown out with the softest edge of frustration.

‘I am not going to ask,’ he says and only after the rush of relief does Andy realise he’d instinctively hunched inward on himself, so tense that his teeth are aching where they’re gritted together. It must be pretty obvious that he was bracing himself for the worst and Novak’s opting to give him an out, again.

Scraping up his voice from where it’s squeezed small between his hunched shoulders, he says, ‘Thank you.’

‘ _But_ ,’ Novak adds, conversational, as light as if remarking on the weather, ‘you should remember that you can tell me anything you would like, any time you would like to tell it, and I promise no problems okay? About anything, a free pass to no yelling no matter what you say. I do not ask questions or if I do... you get to start forty-love up every time we play forever. Tennis player honour.’

For a heartbeat, Andy’s sorely tempted. He’s so tired of carrying this half-secret around, the weight of it and the internalised disappointment of everyone in his life who ever thought he could do better. Maybe Novak wouldn’t look at him with the cloying edge of pity; maybe Novak would say _hey, it wasn’t your fault_ and Andy could almost believe for a second that it was true.

And it’d all be for nothing, because come tomorrow he’s going back to his hostile boss and to letting men fuck him so he doesn’t get kicked out of the shitty flat he can barely afford.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t drag Novak into the disaster that is his life.

‘Tennis player honour?’ he says instead, forcing it to curl up into something teasing at the end as he slants a sideways glance at Novak. ‘Is that a thing? Don’t they say love means nothing in tennis?’

The look Novak gives him in return is indescribably raw. For an instant the mask drops and it’s all there, naked want and resignation written across his face and Andy feels the world tilt, feels himself go tight and hot all over with breathlessness sharp enough to make him dizzy because apparently being able to read Novak in tennis doesn’t mean he can read him at all off-court, because surely he _can’t-_ it’s only been a handful of days and he’s done nothing to put that sharp edge of adoration in Novak’s eyes, hasn’t earned any of it.

Before he can manage to speak – before he can even take a breath – Marian breaks the moment by shouting from over by the net.

‘Oi! Do we chat or practice? If was Wimbledon, I would default you already by time violation!’

Novak blinks and whatever was there – because Andy still refuses to label it, even in his head – vanishes like a cloud swallowing up the sun.

‘If we collapse of exhaustion, we default also,’ he shouts back but he’s already scrambling up, flashing a brittle smile at Andy. ‘Are you good to play on?’

‘Novak,’ Andy starts. Not even sure where he’s going with it but the corners of Novak’s mouth pull down fast, worry tugging at his strained smile and Andy gets the hint; don’t push. He supposes it’s the least he can do when Novak’s already offered him the same favour.

‘So...’ he says instead, ‘what you’re kind of saying is, if I tell you something about myself it’s worth a headstart in points?’

Novak hesitates, halfway turned toward the net, curiosity warring with caution in his frown. ‘I- not exactly but if it help, okay.’

‘A point for every thing?’

‘...yes.’

‘Right.’ Andy pauses as if mulling it over, drawing it out. ‘Well… my favourite colour is blue. Fifteen-love.’

Indignation flashes across Novak’s face. ‘That’s not-’

‘What?’ Andy asks innocently, dusting grass off his hands and reaching for his racquet. ‘You said anything, right? I prefer dogs to cats. Thirty-love.’

‘I did not mean so you could _cheat_ -!’

‘It’s not cheating if you agreed the rules. Kim thinks my favourite painting is Van Gogh’s _Starry Night_ but I only said that so she’d stop telling me about every brushstroke on every painting in history until I picked one. Honestly, I think all art looks the same. Forty-lov-’

‘Fine!’ Novak scowls at him, although Andy can see the beginning cracks of a grin beneath the frustration. ‘At last Wimbledon, I hide a live frog in Federer’s locker and let everyone blame it on Marat. Forty-fifteen.’

Andy smiles back, broad, just a little wicked. ‘The weirdest place I’ve ever been fucked is behind an exhibition on nineteenth-century ladies’ underwear in the V&A museum. Game to me.’

‘I look forward to hearing what secret you tell to win Wimbledon,’ Marian interrupts loudly from behind Novak who startles with a guilty wince, ‘except of course you will not make it past first round because of _not enough_ practice at _tennis_. Also I may slip by then and tell Marat many things, such as why Roger play so angry against him at last Wimbledon.’

‘Marian!’ Novak protests with a note of genuine horror, ‘No, I will wake to lockers of frogs all tournaments for rest of my career, probably all poisonous, you can’t-

‘I can’t if I am distracted coaching you _to play tennis_ ,’ Marian says and Andy watches in awe as Novak snatches up his racquet, practically sprints to the other side of the court.

‘Remind me never to piss you off,’ he says without thinking. He doesn’t have time to regret his mouth running off with him again before Marian turns slightly, hiding it from Novak across the court as he winks.

‘I am wonder coach, take notes,’ he says. ‘Also Marat already know and I bribe him not to take revenge. Just is more fun not to tell Novak you know?’

A tennis ball bounces past as Andy laughs and from across the court, second ball ready to serve, Novak shouts ‘I thought we play tennis?!’

‘Yes yes, time!’ Marian calls back as he grins back at Andy and retreats to the umpire’s position. ‘Score is five game to three!’

Listening to Novak splutter protests that the ‘game’ they just played didn’t _count_ so it’s five-two and Marian’s teasing refusal to budge, Andy’s startled by a creeping flush of warmth that has nothing to do with imminent sunburn. It’s the same sensation as before, the tangled thing sitting somewhere behind his ribs that makes him want to blush and run sprints and push Novak up against the back wall of the court and kiss him, slow and sweet and endless.

He’s not sure, but he thinks it might be something like happiness.

Another tennis ball skims past him, missing the line by a mile. ‘Hey,’ Novak shouts across but he’s grinning when Andy looks up, bouncing from foot to foot and a soft edge to the curl of his mouth, to the look he gives Andy that suggests the endless kissing might happen sooner rather than later, ‘you cannot play tennis sitting down! I need to win fair since our official is biased!’

Yeah, Andy thinks as he scrambles up and into position to receive serve. Happiness might be right.

He decides put off until tomorrow wondering how long it’ll last.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for entire fic, including future chapters: implied threat of non-con with a spiked drink off-screen, implied only and doesn't actually happen. Minor head injury from falling, implied background bondage, implied background bdsm, characters being placed manipulative situations both emotional and physical, family problems both due to homophobia (background) and not, willing-if-not-happy prostitution.


End file.
